A Warrior in an Unknown Land
by Thugs Bunny 009
Summary: What's a girl suppose to do when she finds herself on foreign foil? Why, get back home and fulfill her promises of course... somehow. Yusuke-like Inuyasha
1. One Woman Mission

**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or InuYasha**

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><p><strong>A Warrior in an Unknown Land<strong>

"Ow. What in the hell just happened?"

A petite blond haired girl with whisker-decorated cheeks rhetorically asked, her tone was a strange combination of frustration, debrief, and dread.

Looking down at the scorched ground with an observing gaze, she examined the hard, rocky surface, quickly deducing whatever kind of supernatural phenomena dropped her here – wherever here was – made sure to do the exponential feat with a bang.

Groaning, the girl turned her examination to her surroundings. She felt a slight gap touch at her face when she saw how far this particular pattern of scorched, crumbled ground went. It rivalled a small building quite easily, if she said so herself.

"Didn't think Sasuke-chan and I racked up _that _much fuel in our clash," She mumbled, scratching the side of her now messy twin-ponytailed styled hair.

Taking a look at her attire the girl let out a sigh of relief when she saw her outfit had miraculously survived the journey.

In despite of the fact she wasn't going to win any picture perfect femininity awards with her choice of garments, she treasured them. The orange blouse clinging to her nicely developing hips, showing her c-cup perky breasts, her goggles hung over her forehead to keep the bangs of her hair out of her eyes, her three quarter-trousers, and blue toed shinobi-sandals openly declared her as a free spirit.

Touching her chest area, she was glad her most important piece of clothing was still wrapped tightly around her neck, boldly revealing her affiliation to her beloved Village of Konoha.

"Hmmm," Finding the strange desire to enhance her concentrated expression, the girl squinted her eyes, letting out a few humming thoughtful noises, "Sasuke-chan can't have gotten far, but…" There was that dread feeling again, only this time the unwanted feeling was stronger.

She stubbornly shook her head, refusing to believe the inevitable had happened. She wasn't a quitter. She had sworn a blood oath to herself on her dripping blood that she'd run no more or just throw in the towel when the going gets tough.

Gazing around rapidly, the girl frantically searched for any signs or hints of where her missing AWOL teammate could've treaded off to get away from her, his supposed wannabe recover.

"Where did that idiot high tail it to?" She mumbled out loud, a bitter crestfallen expression on her face as she clenched her hands tightly into fists, "If I don't get to him then he's a go-." She didn't want to finish.

A pair of golden orbs holding gleeful, sick pleasure flashed through her head.

A resolute mask forged from steel mightier than the Gods' divine weapons suddenly found it convenient to slip onto the strong-willed girl's face, "I won't let that happen to Sasuke-chan!" She roared to the heavens, her strong claim startling the birds into action as they took to the skies, "I don't quit and I _don't _weasel outta a promise to a friend! You hear me snake-face! You best roll out the red-carpet because Naruko Uzumaki is coming to deliver you your first-class delivered Can-of-Whoop ass on your scaly, butt-ugly _behind_!"

_Phew._

There was something about yelling witty exclamations that just felt so, relieving; kind of like lifting a pair of massive weights weighing an absolute ton off of her shoulders. Although, perhaps that wasn't the right term to label this kind of forced relieved feeling with. It was more like putting a defensive barrier to protect her insecurities. Yeah. That was perfect.

There was a named term for that.

What was it again?

Ah, yes. Defence mechanism.

Locking those annoyingly bugging thoughts of self-doubt in the furthest depths of the abyss of her mind, the blond haired Jinchuuriki emerged into life, taking off in a random direction. She didn't have a clue if this was the right way or not, but knew better than to just stand around and wait for a miracle to drop into her lap. Patience wasn't exactly a strong point of hers either.

She needed to be moving or doing something, _anything, _of activity.

Reaching the trees in no time at all due to her enhanced speed gained from years of training in the ninja arts, the blond grinned, her natural shinobi instincts telling her to take to the tree lines. An ordinary civilian or an amateur shinobi would've seen nothing but a blur as Naruko dashed from tree branch to tree branch.

She was hoping by taking to the trees, she would be able to get a general scope of the area, thus triggering a memory of the forest she happened to be in. The old man and his second successor to the throne of Hokage had sent Team Seven on plenty of missions that allowed them to _legally _set foot outside the border separating the Land of Fire from the other nations of the world.

Hence lied the problem.

Naruko couldn't recognize any of the settings, none whatsoever. Not even the ones that was still fresh in her mind since they marked the sights of _true companionship_, at least in her heart. She figured with how powerful her comrades were their individual battles with snake-face's henchmen would've left their territory of battle marked with the clear signs of a warring battle. So it begged the obvious question why she was seeing fresh grass _anywhere _she journeyed, even when she backtracked to whence she came from.

Barring the area she had woken up in, everything else seemed relatively peaceful and untouched by the horrors of battle.

"This isn't gonna work out." Naruko mumbled with a sigh, crouching down on a tree branch she made stop at. Feeling her heart sink into the depths of despondency, Naruko gazed up at the orange luminescence, inwardly scowling when the annoying glow hit her eyes.

With a bead of sweat running down her whiskered-cheek, she shielded her eyes with the shadow of her palm, "I've been searching forever now, and till I've made no progress," Dropping her head from the sky, she sighed again, only this time with much more exaggeration, "Worse till it seems like I…"

Though she would never admit it to herself, she was thankful for the distraction when a growl reverberated throughout the air.

"Sooo hungry," She moaned, clutching at her gut with her gloomy expression becoming more pronounced, "I haven't eaten since this whole mission begun," Her gut nagged at her again, forcing her to purr up into a ball, "If I don't get some grub in me real soon, I'm gonna pass out."

Ironically, she almost did too. Luckily, a surge of emergency energy shot into her before her body could fall off of the branch she happened to be balancing on.

The proverbial emergency button was pressed inside of Naruko's head, "Right! Then I'll hunt myself some food and get back to it in the morning!" She boldly exclaimed, standing up before confidently smacking her fist into her palm to create an audible smack.

Defence mechanism activated.

As Naruko hopped down from her perch, landing on the ground in a silent thud, she could only think back to the conversation that had changed her mission from tracking down Sasuke to just finding her way to similar territory.

XxX

(Flashback)

XxX

_The blinding source of not only radiating heat, but also immense beauty shined down on the earth, igniting the ancient-looking world in all its luminescence._

_With the imaginary light bulbs acting as the rays of light needed for the sky to glow at its brightest; a pleasant, peaceful-looking baby blue, the tiny, innocent flying creatures known as birds chirped until their hearts content._

_Naturally, such a day of exquisite beauty was practically begging people to take care of much needed business which could only be dealt with by taking a step out in the open world or simply taking a leisured, aimless walk with no special destination in mind, just venturing the dirt pathways for a little fresh air. _

_In this current scenario, a certain blond-haired foreigner could find an extravagant carriage being led along by two equally high-priced class-bled horses and a single rider dressed in garments fitting for a noble's underling. _

_The four, nondescript guards flanked in front of the carriage in a military formation clearly revealed whoever was in that carriage was High-profile. They each wore identical unremarkable black armoured suits and wielded huge giant axes._

_They were fodder, but still, Naruko would have to watch her tongue to avoid any suspicion. The last thing she wanted to do was make an enemy in an unknown land she happened to set foot on. She had been mindful of who spotted her in case anyone of them happened to be a shinobi of a rival village._

_She wasn't ignorant to the consequences she or any shinobi would face if they stepped on prohibited foil without permission. _

_It would be attack-on sight. _

_Shaking those negative – highly foreign - thoughts off, Naruko steeled her resolve to approach these men. _

"_Uhm. Hiya," With a touch of embarrassment slipping into her squirming posture, the blue eyed girl greeted the men with a clear undertone of pleasant kindness in her voice, whilst rubbing her neck._

_Instantly, she knew she had made the wrong approach. As she watched the robotic-like guards automatically shift into a practised defensive stance, she could only wonder had more folk taken to Zabuza's ideology of abandoning one's emotions to be an efficient soldier to one's village. _

"_Halt! Who goes there?" The guards simultaneously barked out in hoarse voices that seemed to echo several miles as if they were in an underground tunnel. _

_Naruko shot up her hands in open palms, hoping to defuse the immediate hostility, "Whoa, there! Ease up, K! I ain't come around looking for trouble! Honest!" She gave them all what she hoped was her best huge sparkling eyes of innocence. _

_In other words, it translated to, *I ain't a mass murderer, please believe it.* _

_Though the guards' faces were covered in samurai-esque helmets, they cautious gestures and questionable glances at each other portrayed their wariness of the girl. _

"_Hm. I say, what could a little girl possibly want with Lord Kureiji?" The rider asked, clear dumbfounded confusion on his face as his eyes drank in the girl's unusual choice of clothing, "I must say, your clothes are most strange. I've never seen anything like them before."_

_Naruko wasn't surprised to hear that. The only clothes she had seen on folk were ones very old-fashioned looking. It made her think had she somehow travelled through time itself. _

"_Well, that's the thing," Naruko admitted, now earning herself rapt attention from her audience, "I ain't really from around here. I was just wondering if any of you could gimme directions to where I need to go."_

_The guards didn't relax their stance nor did they tighten it upon hearing the girl's confession, not being sure whether the girl was speaking from the heart or she was acting to egg them on so they could drop their guard._

_An expression of sympathetic found its way to the rider's face, "Oh. You're lost?" He asked, "That's a shame, one as young as you. Well, let's hear where you're going and I'll see if I can direct you in the right way."_

_Stars of excitement formed in Naruko's eyes, before she asked with major enthusiasm, "Really? You would do that for me?" _

_The rider chuckled, finding the girl's energetic nature just so adorable, "Oh of course, child. It would be wrong of me to turn away one as young and naïve as you."_

_Naruko nodded, overjoyed at the prospect of finding a way to similar territory, "Okay. In that case I'm on track to the Village Hidden in the Leaves," She chirped, jerking a thumb at the weird six-shaped symbol engraved on the template stitched into the headband wrapped around her neck, "Tho, I ain't got a clue which way it is, so…" She let the obvious question hang in the air lamely. _

_Everything changed when the man repeated every pronoun of her village in a slow manner, clear puzzlement in his voice, "Hidden? Leaf? Village?" In a heartbeat, the blue eyed girl's cheery expression fell from her face as her heart was flooded with impending doom, "I'm afraid I've never heard of such a village."_

"_A-Are y-you sure… sir?" Naruko murmured just audibly enough to be heard, her stuttering, almost Hinata-like tone held an unmistakable twinge of anxiety, underneath the formal politeness. He was, after all, holding up what she believed to be an important person in this place just to try and assist her. She owed him this much at least, "What I mean is, not to be rude... just are you absolutely positive you haven't heard of the Hidden Leaf Village before now?"_

_The rider's eyes narrowed in remorse, "I'm sorry."_

_Much to his slight surprise, Naruko persistently shook her head, "Don't be. I'm sorry for holding you up," She dipped her head in a bow, "I'll be going now. I_ _appreciate this old man, it helps somewhat." _

_The man smiled encouragingly, "Think nothing of it child. I pray you find your way soon. May the spirit guide you well on your journey."_

"_Thank you," Naruko returned. With a simplistic, yet highly strange hand-sign to the men in front of her, the blond vanished before their very eyes in a cloud of smoke and green leaves._

_The guards and the rider were left picking their jaws off of the ground. _

"_Yeah. I'm going to pretend like I never just saw that."_

"_What's the hold up!?"_

"_Oh. Sorry, milord. There was just a little delay out here is all. I shall have you to your home this once."_

"_Humph. You better. I swear. You pay for elites, yet you end up with a bunch of amateurs who wouldn't know how to pick their noses if you handed 'em a blueprint! Yeesh!"_

xXx

_Chapter _

**One**

**Woman **

**Mission**

_One_

xXx

(End of Flashback)

xXx

"Grrr!"

A savage growl of a fairly huge grizzly creature dwarfing Naruko's small frame broke the girl out of her flashback.

"Perfect." Naruko smirked, dodging a swipe of the mad animal's claw, "Looks like I'll be having roast bear for tonight's supper," Kicking the back of the bear's knee, making the bear screech in agony, Naruko forced its massive dark brown hairy leg to an awkward angle. Using that same leg as a makeshift trampoline, Naruko beautifully twisted herself around in a complete 360 spin, bringing her dominant right foot around to deliver a devastating heel kick to its head, slamming it to the ground.

Stealthily landing on her feet, the blue eyed girl felt her interest peaked when she noticed her would-be dinner struggling to stand up to its own feet in despite of the nasty kick she gave it.

"Well would you looky here. We have ourselves a sturdy one!" Naruko jovially taunted, unable to stifle her chuckles at seeing the drunken-looking bear wobbling all over the place, "You look ridiculous!"

After a tumble into a tree, the bear finally managed to gather enough wits about it to have another go at eating Naruko before the blond could devour it. It set itself down on all-fours, snarling threateningly at its 'prey'.

"Till wanna go another round, huh?" The bored Naruko mumbled with an annoyed sigh, hands on her hips, "Sorry, I would've finished you off already had I till had my DAMN kunai," Any semblance of 'cool' she had going on were erased just at the memory of how she had lost the rest of her weaponry, "Stupid Sasuke-chan." She muttered sourly.

This time when the bear sped toward her like a rampaging beast of destruction, she waited until it was in range. Once it was, she elegantly front-flipped, stopping the bear from standing up by stomping her feet on its head, flattening it firmly to the ground with a growl of pain.

"Yuck! You're made out of some tough-stuff to till be up after a hit in the head like that Mr Bear," Naruko complimented with a grain of salt. Shaking the grimace from her face, Naruko decided to wrap this up wearily, "Oh well, you're as good as toast now," Further torturing the bear with a stomp on its back, the girl sent its head ringing by firmly clamping her hands on its temples.

The bear wouldn't even get a chance to claw *Hasta la Vista Baby* on the grassy ground before an ear-aching crack shattered the imaginary mirrors.

Satisfied with her capture, the petite girl nodded her head with her hands on her hips.

"And that is, as they say, all she wrote."

xXx

Not for the first time was the blond haired girl cursing her teammate. Since she neither had a kunai nor a shuriken due to her wayward teammate disarming her, she was forced to rip the bear's fur from its body using her bare hands, which was a frustrating procedure in of itself. She would've thought skinning an animal with her bare hands phase ending at survival training back in the academy.

She never thought she would be forced to do the whole annoying process again since she'd made a mental vow to herself that she would have a kunai on her at all times, just in case she found herself in a similar situation to the one she was in now.

Eventually, Naruko had skinned her prey of its fur and set up a makeshift roasting place with a pair of long, sharpened sticks. Underneath the mock-grill were a ring formation of rocks, inside was where she had made a fire.

She monitored the roasting bear with a sorrow gaze, "I've gotta find a way to get back home," She mumbled, bringing her legs up to her chest before switching her glance at the raging flame beneath her cooking food emitting sounds of popping cereal.

A semblance of her team flashed before her eyes, making her bury her head underneath her closed legs.

"Somehow."

XxX

Unbeknownst to the gloomy little girl, a couple of violet eyes monitored her from a small gap it made for itself in a nearby bush.

"Not much longer now. Soon she'll be asleep, and then I'll make my move."

An inaudible low voice holding childish anticipation stayed within the sanctuary of the bushes. It suddenly found it a good idea to step back, being remindful to close the leaves as slowly as possible as to avoid it being audible enough to be heard, hence alert the girl of someone's presence.

'I've got to calm down.' It bashed itself, fully aware its own breathing was becoming more prominent the more excited it became, 'I can't mess up this opportunity or brother will never let me live it down.'

Forcibly suppressing down its exhilaration to the best of its abilities, it slowly approached the bushes once again. Carefully placing its hands on the edges, it very gently, almost like rocking a baby, pulled the vines apart, inwardly breathing a sigh of relief when it appeared the girl hadn't detected its presence.

XxX

Just as the sun tagged itself out for a quarter visible moon, the blond haired girl allowed a smile to grace her whisker-marked face, except this one was not her usual soft, cheerily inviting smile. No, it was a hard, yet proud, grin, giving her a smug expression.

Just like a standard, basic clone jutsu gone horribly wrong, it vanished, leaving behind a dull, uninterested expression of stoicism.

Amidst the bland-exterior, the blond haired girl roughly grabbed a piece of the fried bear-meat, the heat of the editable substance not a bother to her at all. After all, it wasn't like a little heat would hurt her. She had tanked Sasuke's fire jutsu capable of burning a tree without even messing up her clothes.

"Ahhh!" She said loudly, chomping down on the meat in her hand, not caring if she looked like a pig or not, "Hmm. That hits the spot. It may not be ramen but bear-meat is till the bomb," She chirped, continuing to devour the bear whilst being blissfully unaware to the grimacing orbs watching her.

XxX

(Later)

The bushes rustled momentarily before a head of unkempt white hair poke itself out of the bushes, followed by the rest of a tall humanoid creature of a male gender. He had darkened skin with three outlined whiskers on each of his cheeks, a pair of similar golden orbs that held two black pupils, and the oddities didn't end there. His entire upper body, from what was visible, was covered by black stripes. His arms held identical tattoos, yet those ones went in a swirl pattern around his entire arms.

He wore an orange curtain-like tattered robe that only covered half of his muscled posture, leaving the other half, the left half, clearly visible. A black sash went around his waist matching his black wristband.

Perhaps his most predominant feature happened to be in the form of a kanji symbol engraved on his open chest area.

"Finally," His high squeaky voice contradicted his intimidating posture, making him seem almost gentle in comparison, "And here I thought she would never fall asleep, but…" His eyes fell upon the girl's campsite. The only thing that remained of the bear she had captured was its huge bone skeleton.

The girl had a sense of warmth with the flames she hadn't bothered to put out.

Her sleeping form was most intriguing to him. He had devoured many human girls in their sleep, but none had ever slept like this girl was, all spread out like a slob with bits of leftover meat still around her mouth.

The sight frankly disgusted the creature.

"So unsexy," He observed. He let his ominous, gold eyes fall to the girl's bosom, more specifically where a green gem was perched around her neck, "Hmm. What's this?" He wondered, bending over so he could better examine the valuable-looking piece of jewellery, "This could bring in a pretty penny," His well-defined claw slowly reached for the pricey item, "I'm sure brother would be most pleased with m-."

He halted mid-speech, his tone suddenly reaching ridiculously high notes, even for him.

"Yep, right in the family jewels," He wheezed, automatically latching onto his assaulted member. As he did so, he could feel his fingertips brushing against a few exposed toes, making him feel inclined to tilt his head down to see his prey supposedly waking up, but doing so in bored nonchalance, "You! You were awake all along?!"

"Yep," Naruko mumbled lazily, eyes curiously observing the strange creature above her, "You didn't really think I couldn't detect your presence from the bushes, did you?"

The creature staggered back out of shocked reflex, "You were aware I was there all along and you led me to believe you didn't know anything about my presence at all!"

"Clean out your ears, pal," Naruko quipped, making a lazy cleaning motion to her ear with a rotating index finger.

"I'll kill you!" He raged, flying in on Naruko with a wild punch. After a blur of movement shot from his central vision to his peripheral one, he felt an agonizing blow twist his right leg at an awkward angle, eliciting a groan from him.

Never one to miss an opportunity to take advantage of a clear opening presented, Naruko practically spring-boarded into the air as if she was on a bouncy castle. While the momentum of her acrobatic leap held her upward, the blue eyed girl amazedly manoeuvred herself around to bring her heel crashing into the creature's cheekbone, _quite literally _knocking him into the line of fire.

"Bet you didn't expect that did you?" Naruko taunted with a smirk, distancing herself from the scorching creature, "With that wild punch you threw, you must have been expecting me to be caught in the highlights, huh?"

Despite her little jibes at the man's foolishness, Naruko didn't drop her guard. For a ninja, it wasn't a difficult or rare skill to pick up signs of defeat. Had she won then he would've been obnoxiously screaming and writhing in tremendous agony, two motions of which were glaringly absence.

He rolled, but that was more so he could forcibly purge the flames from his body. In doing so, he put out the flames that once gave Naruko warmth, leaving behind charred ground, scattered rocks, and broken twigs.

"Phew," He breathed a little in relief, tucking his feet inwards to spring him to them once again. He faced his surprisingly angle prey, crossing his arms over his wide broad packs, "You're pretty good, a lot better than I had anticipated in fact if I'm being honest with you."

"Why, thank you!" Naruko said in a feigned pleasant tone, "…For using my line Mr Assassin."

"Tch." He scoffed off the implications of her thinking he was better than she expected, "That's funny, so funny I forgot to laugh, human."

A bland mask of curiosity found its way to Naruko's face at the tag he had labelled her with, with a slight disdain to his tone. So he wasn't _human_, that much was for sure, though he was clearly in some kind of humanoid form since he had the basic characteristics of a human.

'Hmm. Could he be some kinda tiger-being,' Naruko guessed, resisting the urge to palm her face when the tiger-man lunged in on her, snarling wildly with bared fangs, 'Well, he has the growl part down flat!' She mused, quickly fluctuating her body using her dominant right foot. Once the tiger-based being neared her, she put her springing-ability to good use by executing a beautiful back-flip, catching the rage-induced creature on his chin in her tactical retreat.

"Gah!" His head lurched upwards at a disturbingly fast pace from the blow, "_Damn!_" He cursed with sheer added emphasis of venom in his tone, 'I almost bit my tongue.'

"Aw, what's the matter?" Naruko asked in her most cherished resonance, playful teasing. Cupping her cheeks, Naruko made kissy faces at the man to patronize him, "Did the little kitty cat get a boo-boo?"

His body visibly jerked, "I," He grafted out, losing his previous high-pitched voice. He growled in frustration at the girl's annoying grin, "If you think a mere jibe at my tribe will upset me then you're wrong. We're above that shit you peanut head!"

"Why, how mature of you!" Naruko declared with cheerful sarcasm, adamantly refusing to let her cautiousness of there potentially being more tiger-men to fight show. She idly wondered if there were more unusual animal-based tribes in this district of the globe she had inadvertently treaded foot on by some otherworldly means.

"Humph. Flattery will get you nowhere," He quipped, setting himself in a recognizable crouched fighting stance Naruko picked up easily, "Except a first class ticket on the carriage to hell," There was something about his foul intone that made Naruko shiver, but before she would get a chance to retort she was forced on the defence again when the tiger-man drove in on her. This time when he moved, however, he did it with a swift slickness most fitting of a highly trained taijutsu-specialist.

He skilfully zigzagged to Naruko as easily as a normal human would do wearing rollblades, only far faster, whilst keeping his hands together in a triangle shape but his elbows out wide.

A shiny sparkle being emitted from his fingertips caught the blue eyed girl's attention.

Naruko, not needing a second invitation to stick around, bounced on her foot to effortlessly springboard out of range from the tiger-man's wild double outward swinging slash. Before she would even hit the ground, her eyes would pick up on a beam-like claw-styled white glow speeding past her, shaving a few bits of her luscious, yet messy blond twin-ponytailed hair off of her shiny crown to emphasize how close she was to getting sliced to shreds.

'Whoa, that's sharp!' Naruko gaped.

She startled when the resonance of grinding wood penetrated the environmental air, giving her a most unwanted remembrance of nails on a chalkboard. With curiosity threatening to waste her, Naruko took the risk to steal the briefest of glances behind her, which was all she needed to see that the manifested claws had left their marks on multiple tree-trunks.

"Yikes, that would've left a mark," Naruko stated with blunt honesty, on the move once again with the tiger-man trying to capitalize on her lapse in concentration by nailing her with a straightforward, yet powerful leg-thrust.

The airborne girl casually negated his sneak attack by slamming her palms on his incoming leg, using the leverage to wrestle with gravity with her legs spaced apart as if she was in the midst of doing the splits.

Not wasting any time hanging around, the high-flying girl landed neatly on the outstretched tiger-based warrior's leg, ricocheting off of it to toss herself over his head, but not before she arrowed a forceful punt to the back of his head.

He hollered lowly, saliva splattering out of his knocked down head. Then he felt his momentum forcibly propelled forward by a solid thrust impact of a sandal, making him have to add his own exertion into his feet or risk flying through the air.

"Hm," He hummed with dirt coming up to his knees, "So that how it is," He discovered, turning to face the girl who was lowering an out-stretched leg, "You have skill, but no power."

Naruko felt a sudden fear began to overtake her heart. If he had figured that much out then anyone could predict he would plan countermeasures in order to subdue her despite the clear, unclouded difference in their skill-levels.

"Shows what you know," Naruko retorted, instantaneously going into a bland-exterior to mask any signs of nervousness that could expose her, "I ain't even begun to draw on the big guns, so I wouldn't run my mouth if I were in your shoes, because it just might end up coming back to bite me in the ass."

For a few passing seconds, the creature before her regarded her stony stoicism with a blank expression of curiosity, carefully replaying her witty statement inside his head. Finally, he tittered, in a slow, rhythmic manner at first until he was ready to let loose with a wild chuckle.

"Haha! You're funny," He complimented, taking Naruko's passive annoyance as a sign to elaborate, "If you really had some 'great technique' hidden away, you would've already used it by now."

Naruko allowed a small, optimistic smile discharging pure self-assurance to spread across her visage, "Why don't you come and try me then," She suggested flirtatiously, not being able to resist when the chance was basically handed to her via a gold platter. It was just _so _fun messing with people, "That is, unless you're scared of little old me."

He narrowed his golden sclera, snarling a little to show his irritation, "You still insist of pulling the wool over my eyes," He squeaked, resisting the need to shake his head in disapproval, "Fine. Have it your way, then. K?" He zoomed at her at a barely above Genin-level speed, doing his zigzag-shtick sprint.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," Naruko shrugged casually, slouching her posture in what could be considered a lazy stance with swinging arms.

Throwing both of his broad arms outwards as if he was using the breaststroke style in a pool of bloody water, the white haired humanoid creature slashed at Naruko's legs. Exceptionally quick off of the mark, the blue eyed taijutsu expert left the ground in a forward, basic tiny leap, blasting her opponent into the bridge of his nose.

Seeing stars, the tiger-man shuffled back uncontrollably, grasping his damaged nose with his clawed hand. Unfortunately, that was not the last of his see-and-eye problems, not by a long shot. It proved to be so when his vision was further distorted by a double-stomp of Naruko's feet.

Mentally cheering her success of sending the big oaf wobbling backward while unwittingly twisting himself in loops, Naruko pulled herself upward, bringing her forearm down on her adversary.

Her own arm was left ringing.

"Yikes! That hurt!" Naruko said, pulling away from the tank in front of her, whilst holding her throbbing right forearm, "What the heck is he made out of, solid cement? It felt like I was clobbering a _damn _house for pete's sake."

"Hehe." A small, cocky snicker of self-satisfaction left her opponent's lips, "You are shocked, I take it?"

"Well, _duh. _Whatever gave you that idea Sherlock?" Naruko asked in one of her rare moments of impudence. She wasn't the traditional ladylike girl by any means, but she wasn't usually a rude jerk either. A murdering douchebag trying to rob her of her precious necklace was an exception to the rule however.

He only laughed again despite the remark of insolence, "You're either incredibly wet-behind-the-ears or a foreigner to not know of our steel skin."

"Um? Steel skin?" The blond newcomer enquired, deciding to put on the cute blank expression of innocent peculiarity to cloak her annoyance at being called a 'fresh-out-the-bag' rookie or foreigner, "So what? It just means I got to put in more elbow grease in my punches to tire you out."

The creature sighed, rubbing the back of his neck in annoyance, "That optimism of yours, I don't know whether to applaud it or curse it," He said, sighing harder, "Though I suppose it doesn't matter in the long haul," The several dirt clouds picked up on his dash to Naruko, "Now does it?"

"Or it could mean you haven't got a retort to back-up your claim so you're falling on the tried-and-true attack method as a lame attempt to cover your tracks," Naruko quipped, immediately shifting herself in her uncustomary, slack-looking stance. Golden irises met bright cerulean ones in hands-on-mouth killing suspense moment as the predator advanced in on his prey.

Then, the hunter miraculously changed course, causing the hunted to goofy lose her sense of balance and wobble briefly before regaining her balance in annoyance.

"Gah. Should've expected something like that," After all, it wasn't a far-cry to believe your adversary would try any form of trickery in a desperate attempt to get the upper hand in your fight.

Quickly snapping her attention back onto her would-be thief, her eyes widened in alarm at the sight of him bear-hugging a random tree minding its own business. With arms tucked behind her, Naruko galloped towards her adversary in the typical ninja-taught way.

"Talk about _literally _putting your money where your mouth is," Naruko said.

"I'll show you first-hand why the tiger-tribe is number one!" He declared with pride, his golden irises stretching far with comical emphasis at the darting form of Naruko, "Crap, crap, crap, crap!" He hurried, gritted his teeth, and threw his back backward to pour in all the exertion he could muster to rip the tree from its very roots.

With a vein clearly visible on his arm, the tiger-based creature purged the tree from the ground with a sickening crunch reverberating through the distant night air. Swinging wildly, he forced the scowling Naruko away with a triumphant huff.

"This guy's strength is off the charts!" Naruko mused whilst still in the backward motion. When her feet touched glassy ground, she was forced off of them once again to avoid being flattened like a pancake by said tree trunk that looked like it had been given a forceful shave by being hammered into the ground.

"Now do you see the might of the tiger-tribe little girl?" He squeaked with undeniable exhilaration that greatly highlighted his ego, "_Heh! _Please. By all means carry on underestimating the potency of our steel skin! It'll just make my job easier!"

"You lummox! All you did was flaunt a bit of your strength which had nothing to do with durability," Naruko heatedly retorted, feeling the blood rush to her head while the momentum of her leap still carried her skyward, "How's about you go back to school and learn the difference between dishing out a good-old fashioned pounding and taking one first before you brag."

Surprisingly, he chuckled in amusement before eyeing her with a hungry gaze that made her skin crawl, "I wouldn't expect you to understand, but then again meals never do," While Naruko gasped in horrified realization, he held the much larger tree up straight as if it was an Olympic pole.

'A cannibal, huh? I wasn't expecting that.' Naruko thought, her mind already telling her to end this fight in a heartbeat and get moving, 'Alright. No more Miss Nice-girl. Now it's personal.' Shaping her hands so they resembled a cage, Naruko concentrated her chakra.

Taking two tremendous strides forward that seemed to send quakes through the ground, he hammered the tree down with emphasis, pulling himself back. He pushed himself in a way that made it seem like he had been slingshot through the air, his mouth dripping with gleeful salvia.

"It's feast time."

"Sorry, but I'm putting _you_ on a strict vegetarian diet." Naruko stated unapologetically, feeling the warm ethereal energy of her chakra swirling intensely within the compass of her hands, a slight ocean brilliance gaining momentum being emitted from it.

"Heh. Like you could do anything to get past my steel sk-." His attempt to refute Naruko's quip of confidence would stop cold in its tracks from a blue radiance. The power his keen senses picked up from the spherical orb left him gaping in the headlights, "What is that?" He murmured.

'Rasengan.' Naruko would keep her cards close to her chest with a casual air around her. Thrusting her signature jutsu at her incoming adversary, she coolly whispered, "See ya."

"Shit!" Despite not knowing what that strange glowing orb was, he knew when to trust his instincts. Taking that attack head on would not fare well for him. But what was a tribesman meant to do when the fireworks were heading straight at him? The only thing he could do was shield his body from the impacts using his X-shaped arms.

What followed next was the most unbearable period of pain he had ever felt in his long life when Naruko's Rasengan met his front forearm, which just happened to be his right. It felt like a dangerous, sadistic combination of a high calibre warrior torturing his wrist with a Indian-burn whilst wearing spiky gloves and blowing up his wrist!

It was excruciating!

He tried to desperately hold in his screams by gnashing his teeth, but all that did was prolong the inevitable. His loud, audible grunts made that clear enough.

Eventually, he cracked, letting out a ear-bloodcurdling scream that left Naruko's head ringing.

"AAAAHHHHHHH!"

Growing weary of the man's wails of agony, Naruko sent him flying toward the canopy of the forest with a massive Rasengan-induced push. His form would wheel through several manifested rings of air from the force of the Rasengan before crash-landing stupendously within the midst of the jungle. An enormous dirt cloud shot above the canopy to spotlight the shockwave that knocked four trees down as a result.

"Timber!" Naruko jokingly roared, neatly landing on her feet. She stood up, wiping sweat from her brow, "Phew, it's always good to have an ace-in-the-hole. Right Mr Beast-guy?" She asked, blinking her eyes when she never got a response, "You till there or just did you leave the proverbial towel on the floor and shoot off? Either way's fine with me, I just want an answer."

XxX

"Ow, shit." He cursed, holding his severely damaged immobile wrist in the crater he laid in, "H-How did she even do that? I-Is she even human?"

"Hell~oo! Do you want to go another round or what? You do know it's rude to keep a lady waiting don't you?"

Frustration gave way to raising panic hearing the almost jovial invitation, "She still wants to fight? Hell no!" He whispered aloud, hurriedly jumping to his feet to scamper away from the inhuman girl, "She has speed to match her supreme skill, and an otherworldly technique to more than make up for her lack of physical strength! I'm fucked, I'm _literally _fucked if I stick around to tussle it out with her."

XxX

"Meh. Guess he decided to bail after all," Naruko said, picking up on the sounds of shuffling feet amidst the more predominant audible rustle of leaves, "I wonder what that guy was anyway?" He definitely wasn't human, however Naruko didn't want to jump the gun and call him a monster since it would feel, to her, like she was discriminating him.

Spinning her arm around in a three hundred and sixty circle, the blue eyed girl rolled her neck from side to side, "That was a good warm-up, but I'd better find some shelter. Wherever here is, it ain't the safest place in the known universe to have a campout."

As she took off to locate shelter, she couldn't quell the sense of excitement of what she could potentially discover in her latest adventure… for better or for worse.


	2. Freedom is Bless

**Disclaimer: Naruto or InuYasha **

* * *

><p>An exhale of noticeable relief left the lips of the lost kunoichi, who was in the middle of removing a pesky vine out of her face, publishing two defined deep bags of exhaustion underneath her goggles-clad eyes.<p>

"Whew! At least I'm getting somewhere after a long night of hiking." Naruko said, lifting up her goggles to her forehead.

She had been on the move non-stop since her last relatively easy scrimmage with that people-eater. Sure she had managed to dictate the fight to sparring-levels, but his insinuation told her she wouldn't be getting an elementary time to civilianisation if she didn't keep on the move using the shadows of the forest to her advantage to stay hidden.

She may not be so lucky next time she ran into a member of that particular dynasty. Naturally, they would probably hold a grudge against her for embarrassing one of their tribesmen, depending if they were one of unity.

Naruko liked to think they were even if it meant her chances of survival at the prospect of encountering them again would lose a hundred pounds, looking so slim the imaginary bones would be visible.

Even at the risk of looking hopelessly naïve Naruko didn't like the thought of anyone suffering from loneliness. It was a subject she had been all too acquainted with since she could first form words in her mouth after all, and one she wouldn't even wish on her worst enemy.

It was… absolutely horrifying.

Looking around the wide meadow she'd ventured within to, Naruko's single eyebrow rose up with interest wondering if with any luck the fortune she could likely gain from the mythological object of fortuity could send her back home.

'Cept I don't have any money,' Naruko internally realized with a moan, emptying out her pockets. She wasn't entirely sure if the currency used in this realm was even the same as Konoha's. Then again, it was a wishing well. It wasn't like it played favours with its country's one true currency.

Half turning away from the wore down well, Naruko's last sideways glance lingered on it for seconds on end, "Hmmm, I dunno why, but," She mumbled, following her instincts to its chosen destination, right next to the rusty, ancient well. It was even made out of wood instead of bricks like most modern-day walls tend to be made out of.

"Yeesh, Naruko! It's just a crummy old well for crying out loud," She spoke in the first person to highlight her admonishment of her peculiar interest in this random grandpa well, grasping her forehead and turning her head up.

Taking another glance at the well, she had to dryly add, 'Which makes me think I've travelled back to the past somehow,' She mused with a bizarre expression that disguised the trepidation in her eyes, 'I don't even wanna know what toad would pop up if I tried to summon Chief toad or 'Kichi.'

Something nagged at her to poke her head into the wall. It was like a little imaginary mischievous voice that occasionally tried to hoax someone into looking into a mystery, such as what Kakashi hid underneath his damn mask.

Gah. One day, she would see what was behind Kakashi's mask… and not just her. She and her two teammates, Sakura and Sasuke, would all discover what Kakashi hid underneath his mask together, not just as a team but also as a family. They may have been the most dysfunctional family in history, but goddamn it, Naruko would be damned if they wasn't. They were and she would do whatever it took to bring them all together again.

Believe it!

Deciding to just give in so she could banish her unearthly curiosity, Naruko peeked down the seemingly bottomless abyss of the short wooden well poking out of the ground. The height of it only came up to her knees, so it wasn't like she was going out of her way to look into it.

"See. Just an empty old well with a junky smell," Naruko whispered, feeling like she was trying to grimace to cover up her wariness of the well.

A shiny, but small sparkle only barely caught her eye.

"Wait. What was tha-?" She stepped back hastily when a sudden mesmerizing glow emitting an almost otherworldly source of power flashed before her eyes, leading her toward it. An energy supply had to be godly if even Naruko, aka Miss Non-sensory ninja, could sense it.

"Oh-kay, something freaky's up with that well," Naruko stated cautiously, slowly backing up with her hands raised as if she was expecting a mole to pop out of the hole, "So, I'm just gonna head on this way," Making a complete U-turn, Naruko power walked out of the well's radius, completely missing the dark hissing feminine tone of twisted euphoria echoing from the strange well.

"I. Live… the jewel, I must have it."

xXx

**Chapter **

Freedom

Is

Bless

**Two**

xXx

"Things just keep on going from weird to straight-up hell of insanity," Naruko lowly quipped, hands on her hips.

She wondered if the Big-guy upstairs up in the fluffy white palace being shielded by golden-bars had an unfair prejudice against her.

Things had just been going from bad to worst ever since Shikamaru woke her up telling her she'd been recruited for a mission to bring back Sasuke. Firstly, Snake-face's powerful henchmen forced her team to honourably disband to fight the one trying to stall them or risk losing Sasuke altogether.

Secondly, another, even more powerful pawn than the last lackeys of Snake-face showed up to hold her off so a newly-wakened curse-marked Sasuke could get away. If it hadn't of been for Bushy-brow showing up in the nick of time to take that fight off of her hands, Naruko was sure she wouldn't have beat Kimimaro unless she had tapped into two, or maybe even three, tails worth of the Fox's chakra.

By then Sasuke would've gotten away.

Thirdly, Sasuke told her he had no intent of being with her and Sakura anymore; that his days 'playing' ninja with them in the village were over. She could unfortunately remember every painful word which came from Sasuke's mouth. It was as if he had figuratively ripped his hands into her chest and pulled out her heart.

...Ironically, Sasuke had even tried to do that.

She couldn't recall much from their fight barring the glaring fact that they had rammed each other with their techniques, creating a transcendental light and then…

...She ended up in a destroyed section of a forest.

It had been one mini misadventure after the next since. She had already fought for her life against some man-eater, resisted being lured into some really creepy well, and now this, the next abnormality was staring her in the face in the form of red, white, and… Were those doggy ears?

"First a tiger, and now a dog," She said flippantly, feeling the need to dryly correct herself when she took a step closer to get a better look at the unconscious form of the Dog-based entity pinned to a tree via an arrow, "Well… dead dog," She somewhat awkwardly rubbed her arm, "What's next, a fox? Or even a wild coyote? Heck, might as well throw in jackals too just to complete the canidae package." She decided to discernibly leave out the possible feline-type creatures out of dislike even though tigers were apart of said detested community.

For a moment she idly wondered why her 'partner' hadn't chipped in with his own input, but shortly concluded he probably didn't want to be compared to a puny demon, or any demons in general in this case. He knew what he was, and he wasn't that, though his alias said otherwise.

Naruko found her eyes peculiarly drawn to the Dog-boy's ears, "Those ears," With an odd desire welling up inside of her, she curiously moved in to better examine the dog-boy, hopping onto the vine that made a perfect branch for her, "Definitely dead," She checked, noting his unmoving heart before giving his ears a little squeeze, banishing the strange desire.

"Phew. Now my darn curiosity can rest," Naruko said brightly.

Her mood sobered when she regarded the dog-boy's appearance with a thoughtful hum. He had long silver hair stretching out down to his back and was donned in a bright red kimono with long sleeves, yet was barefoot.

It could've just been her prejudice talking but she, for one, had never disliked dogs. They were all just so friendly and cheerful she couldn't help but adore them. Now if it was a feline-type humanoid it would've been a different story, however.

Those were the devil-spawns.

"He doesn't look so bad," She murmured to herself, eyes landing on the arrow.

When she placed her hand on the arrow, she attempted to pry it out of his chest to divulge via the blood on the arrow how long he had been dead, yet she angrily found out she couldn't, "It won't even budge."

Growing frustrated, Naruko supplied a little bit of force in her attempt to pry the arrow from the boy's chest. It was barely even two seconds when she started doing that did her hand fly back uncontrollably as if she had succeeded in her endeavour, the sudden haul of her arm making her momentarily lose her balance on the vine.

"Gah." She said in annoyance, quickly gripping hold of herself before she fell.

Now when she glanced at the boy she noticed he was free of the arrow that once bound him to a tree. So Naruko could safely assume whoever pinned the boy used some hocus-pocus to seal him.

"Till not waking up," She mumbled with a sigh, throwing her arms up in an act of surrender, "Oh, well. I tried, sorry, dog-boy," She said, having the decency to look remorseful. Too bad. Kiba would've loved him.

Turning around, Naruko jumped off of the vine, feeling a surge of buoyancy erupt through her, "Alright. I can't be too much further from a village now. I could really do with a power-nap," As she darted off, she added in a tone of amusement, "And a hot bath and a streaming bowl of ramen. Yeah!"

XxX

(Elsewhere – Location Unknown)

XxX

The residents of a small, humble village all crowded around the centre point of their home, warily eyeing a young teenage girl as if she was some alien from another planet. The noticeable distance between the tied-up girl and the villagers highlighted just how out of place she was, wearing such otherworldly garments while they wore rags and old samurai-like kimonos that were seemingly the norm around here.

'Err, oh-kay, you guys didn't have to tie me up. I would've come along if you just asked me nicely, y'know.'

A young girl mentally complained to herself with a slight pout of annoyance on her face.

She had long flowing black silk hair reaching her mid back, two bright ocean-pool eyes holding bewilderment. Her garments made her stick out like a sore thumb, a bright sailor fuku which consisted of a short green skirt, a white, green-collared shirt with a red ribbon bow-tie, long white socks, and a pair of brown shoes fitted on her feet.

"Is she real?"

"I wonder if she's human."

"I know, look how unnaturally clean her clothes are."

"Look how shiny and clean her hair is!"

"She's a witch I tell ya!"

"Mommy, where'd the weird witch-lady come from?"

"Don't look at her sweetie!"

The black haired girl gazed at the cautious, somewhat fearful, gazes of the villagers blankly, "Err, no. I'm not that. C'mon that's ridiculous."

"Humph. And give us one good reason why we should believe you," A random, non-important villager challenged in a tone of clear supremacy, crossing his arms over his chest, "For all we know you could be putting on the innocent act as a method to lure us into a false sense of security," His fellow neighbours all hopped on the bandwagon with hums of agreement.

'Oh brother, give me a break.' The captive rhetorically demanded with a shake of her head in exasperation, her long, unnaturally clean hair fluttering messily in the annoyed motion. Noticing the crowd part, she perked up slightly; relieved someone in this village was capable of playing spokeswoman. Probably now they could hopefully resolve this whole misunderstanding peacefully.

"Lady Kaede," A villager identified the one-eyed wrinkled old woman as Kaede. Old age had conspicuously been kind to Kaede made evident by her crop of long grey hair tied in a ponytail which reached her lower back. She was garbed in a white traditional kimono dress, red hakama, and on her feet were a combination of white socks and straw sandals for comfort.

Due to the small fact that Kaede had dipped her wrinkled-hand within the space of a small, portable sack-bag, it momentarily became Kaede's most distinguishable piece of vestments on her person to the young black haired girl.

The young foreign girl now watched Kaede consider her with a serious expression of intent on her face and couldn't quite will away the twinge of consternation from her heart. _Gosh._ She wanted a peace-making discussion, not a funeral. God, she had that homework she needed to hand in to her homeroom teacher. How could she do that if she was buried six-feet under?

"Demon begone," Kaede commanded in a distinctive medieval accent, throwing her arm out to the side.

The unpleasant feeling of impending danger was washed away instantly from the girl's heart and irritation took its place when a shower of small, but ultimately picky bits landed on her face.

"Hey," She cried sulkily.

"Thou art not a demon?"

"No," The girl assaulted with a mass of salt deadpanned.

"Then what were thou doing in Inuyasha's forest?"

"Eh?"

A villager strode up to Kaede, offering her his two-cents in a whisper in her ear.

His suggestion was treated with a sideways glance of incredulity from Kaede's single visible eye, "In that case she would be a fool," She turned back to the pouting young girl, feeling an odd sensation of familiarity wash through her-being looking at the tied-up young girl, "Who in their right frame of mind would invade such a destitute village such as ours? Surely, such a thing wouldst be unfathomable."

As the villagers gossiped among themselves concerning the nature of the strange girl's arrival here, Kaede's single dilated slightly taking in the girl's nigh duplicate features.

'Couldst it be she's-.'

"-an alien I tell ya!"

A concentrated expression formed on Kaede's visage.

Had _she _really come back after all this time?

xXx

(With Naruko)

xXx

"Looks like I really am in the feudal states," Naruko mumbled mournfully, looking from her position perched on the red shrine gate.

It wasn't that the village which she happened to be staring at was obnoxious by any means, on the contrary, it was actually a lovely, relaxing sight to concentrate at to take one's mind off of one's troubles, it was just in comparison to the Hidden Leaf Village this 'village' looked more like a run-down farm.

Instead of tall, colourful buildings which Naruko's village had in abundance, this little village had many small huts made out of wood acting as both houses and buildings from what Naruko could see. It had a massive white windmill in exchange of the customary massive mountain with four distinct legendary faces embedded into it that Naruko had gotten used to seeing every time she stepped through the gates of her village after returning from a long mission.

Saving the best for last, Naruko's eyes roamed over to a multitude of lakes, only separated by the myriad of dirt pathways between them. From her perched position on top of the shrine gate, the lake area looked like a pattern of squares.

It was quite the dazzling sight actually.

Sighing contently, Naruko blurred away from the shrine gate, knowing it wasn't in her best interest to linger around in one spot if she wanted to stay hidden for the time being. So as she stealthily moved through the village via the rooftops of these small huts, she noticed a small bridge positioned just over a diminutive canal. Next to the windmill was where the crop-fields had been set up.

It looked more like a village then her one ever did. Modern day villages weren't meant to look like small towns in the rural areas. No. Present day villages were the sizes of entire cities, even bigger than small islands in some cases.

Her self-given mission of returning home was looking increasingly more inauspicious the deeper she drove into her journey.

What looked equally as ominous as Naruko's mission was the interrogation scene she had spotted atop a building.

"What's going on here?" She asked in a crouch, squinting her eyes to get a better look at the suspicious scene before her. She found it so suspect. A young girl, probably about a couple of years older than her, tied up. She couldn't even sense a lick of chakra from her. Naruko may not have been a sensory-type ninja, but she could still sense another shinobi's distinct chakra's signature if one was near her location.

And that was the puzzle of the millennia. No matter where Naruko travelled, no matter who she neared, or passed, she couldn't pick up even an ounce of chakra from anyone. Even her last opponent didn't have chakra.

He had an aura, which felt foul, but it definitely wasn't chakra.

It was almost like chakra didn't exist in this domain. It was strange and at the same time, frightening. The eerie absence of chakra gave the blue eyed, optimistic girl an insinuation she certainly didn't want. And if it was anything to go by, then she would most likely need otherworldly expertise to get home.

"This whole thing smells fishy," Naruko murmured, standing up whilst training her eyes on the small old woman in front of the tied-up black haired girl wearing futuristic clothing, "I'm gonna go down there and see what's what. Who knows, with any kinda luck it might just turn out they're just paranoid."

Naruko felt especially buoyant this guess of hers would be true just by looking at the girl's clothes. The fabric looked identical to hers, meaning there was a decent chance that she might have come indirectly into this world just like Naruko had. If that turned out to be true than she was her only lead of returning back to where she had come from.

It was a long shot in the dark, but at the end of the day if you don't buy a lottery ticket you won't win the raffle.

That was Naruko's motto and one she was sticking to.

xXx

"She must be a witch."

"Yes, I agree."

"Hmm. I know, what else could she be if she isn't a demon?"

"Useless she be somehow immune to lady Kaede's purification powder."

"But that be impossible. How you think a demon would build such immunity to purification?"

The black haired girl softly sighed, looking mildly embarrassed at some of the villagers' inadequacy to speak fluently, 'My wrists are falling asleep,' She mused frivolously, trying to give her mind something else to reflect on as an alternative to how ineloquent a few of the villagers were with their words.

A flash of bright yellow caught her eye. For a second, she almost believed the sun had miraculously been pulled toward the village until she saw two unnaturally bright yellow strands of hair, almost golden in its radiance, bobbing about in the form of two ponytails.

'Oooooo-kay,' She drawled internally, a blank look of incomprehension on her face as the petite blond haired girl with the curvaceous body rose an index finger to tap Kaede on the shoulder, 'So I can cross blond off of my list of weird hair colours I've seen today.' Well hers wasn't all that weird compared to the last hair colour she spotted, it was just that it was unusual to see a blond person in her society, unless they were a gaijin.

Though the finger of the petite blond haired girl landed delicately on Kaede's shoulder, time seemed to agonizingly stop in the same instance the one brought to attention flinched and the surrounding villagers let out gasps of recognition.

"Uhm. Hello there. I was just wondering why you had that girl tied up, lady?" Naruko asked with her formal, default politeness.

"Ah! Another one!"

"Where'd she come from?"

"Has she come for the captive?"

"She must have! Just look at her unnatural hair!"

"Then she's a witch too I tell ya!"

"Lady Kaede, watch out."

Naruko didn't know whether to be amused or annoyed at the over-the-top reactions the villagers gave to her arrival, but she supposed she would probably freak out too if a strange girl basically drop out of the fucking sky in her village. She considered all of their wary, more fearful glances with a dry expression of boredom.

'Just like the good old days,' Naruko sardonically thought.

With how cool Kaede was despite her fellow residents freaking out at Naruko's speedy appearance, the two foreign girls both whimsically thought she either spent too much time in the freezer or had way too much ice cream as she turned to regard Naruko with formal contemplation.

"And who might thou be?" She asked in her own noteworthy accent, one which Naruko had never heard in anyone in her own world, as most just sounded relatively the same albeit with varying tones of emotions in their voices to portray their personalities, "A demon?"

"S'cuse me?" Naruko asked snappily, not at all caught off guard with the information she had inadvertently been given. She figured that tiger-based humanoid entity she had faced off against last night had to be some type of being. She just found it ironic that he was most likely a demon seeing as it was a tag her tenant had been labelled with by misinformed villagers.

An awkward, empathetic smile graced the black haired, similarly eyed coloured girl's face when the same shower of annoyingly picky and dusty bits washed over the now miffed face of the blond haired girl.

'I know just how you feel,' She mused.

"Demon begone." Kaede ordered, but not as sternly as she had originally said so when she'd first given the young girl bound by rope the command.

"Yeah. Oh-kay, nice," Naruko said sarcastically, a look of annoyance on her face. Gossip once again broke out among the villagers, each debating what the strange girl could be and what relations to their captive she could possibly have.

Kaede's one single visible eye narrowed, but not in lethal intent. The old, highly respected elder just continued to study the peculiar otherworldly haired girl with a calm pensive expression, not objecting when the girl stomped past her to kneel behind the bound black haired girl before freeing her of her bounds.

"Lady Kaede-." Kaede silenced the protesting villager with a mere glance. The villagers hesitated, but otherwise left the foreign girls in the wise elder's hands.

"Hey, thanks!" The black haired girl cheered appreciatively, rubbing her sore wrists.

"No problem," Naruko assured with a bright smile. "I didn't think you were a bad guy, so yeah."

The black haired girl blinked blankly, following the short blond girl up to her feet. Naruko only came up to her elbow, "You mean you didn't know I wasn't from around here," She said, stating the obvious.

"Hmm-mmm. But I've learnt to trust my intuition." Naruko confessed with a confident, yet cheeky wink, "Name's Naruko Uzumaki by the way. What's yours, miss?"

The identical eyed, oddly placed girl peaked up, "Oh. I'm Kagome Higurashi. It's nice to meet you, Naruko-san, even if now isn't the best of circumstances," She finished with mild embarrassment in her otherwise exuberant-exterior.

Naruko, sensing both Kagome's vigour and embarrassment, disregarded the latter, but allowed the former's infectious nature to take an effect on her, returning her zest ten folds over, "Back at ya, Miss Kagome."

Kagome smiled at the blond haired girl's enthusiasm, feeling a sense of relief well up inside of her taking in the girl's countenance, 'Well, I'm sure glad there's someone around here who dresses like they come from Tokyo. Hey, maybe she came from Tokyo,' She pondered, dabbing an index finger on her chin, much to Naruko's confusion, 'But then again that sounds really farfetched. I doubt even Grandpa would send a girl down the creepy well to rescue me from the proverbial tower.'

"So," Naruko drawled, fidgeting slightly, "What now?"

"Ummmmm." In return, Kagome also droned with a tone of clear perplexity, "You know, I'm not quite sure. Your guess is as good as mine, Naruko-san." She truthfully said, a polite yet sheepish smile on her face.

'Well there goes my one lead,' Naruko quickly realized with a disproving deadpanned expression on her whiskered-visage, 'Guess it's back to the drawing board, then.'

"Come along, children," Both girls turned equally curious-eyed expressions onto the mild request of an one-eyed elder, spotting her turning on her heel, "If ye happened to be lost, then perhaps I might be of assistance to ye. Come, we can discuss further details at my house. Thy stomachs must be terribly empty, are thy not?"

Before the two outsiders could protest with their now distant debrief, their stomachs conveniently decided they wanted to take Kaede up on her offer with a couple of audible rumbles that combined to make one mildly loud even more feral sound that was almost animalistic in nature.

"Woops, almost forgot. I'm starved," Naruko admitted, a pair of bright colourful pink circles on her otherwise sunny countenance as she rubbed her stomach.

"Gosh, how embarrassing," Kagome said, her own lit-up flushed countenance mirroring Naruko's as she took to also mimicking the girl's actions by placating her wildly protesting stomach.

Naruko stretched her arms, letting out a few relieved humming noises before settling her arms behind her head in a cross-pattern to portray her now laid-back physiognomy, "Meh. We might as well take granny up on her offer. She owes you that much at least after the whole… well, you know, 'tie-you-up' thing like you were some alien from another planet."

Although Kagome did agree with Naruko's suggestion, she couldn't quite stifle the giggle which escaped her mouth at Naruko's puckish sense of humour as two begun to follow the smaller old lady back to her house. She had the respectability to look somewhat remorseful when Kaede mildly admonished her and Naruko.

"It would seem the youth of today's generation could benefit from learning to respect thy elders, could thy not?"

As Naruko cheeky snickered, Kagome 'attempted' to be the level-headed one between them and gently coax Naruko to cease with her laughter. Key word being 'attempted' since her own clear audible giggles showed she was blissfully failing.

Sometimes it was good to be young.

XxX

(Meanwhile)

"The. Jewel. The jewel. I must have it!"

As the sun prepared to turn in for the night, leaving the sky a medium shade of blazing orange in its half-completed wake, a familiar voice of warped bliss that one blond haired kunoichi had missed earlier resounded from out of the well in a chilling, undead fashion.

Two sets of unearthly long lengthened shadowed arms ominously reached up, gripping the edges of the well in a slow dramatic fashion, almost as if the bearer of said arms was trying to discern reality from fantasy.

"Yes," A faint feminine voice hissed darkly. Treading on the malevolent heels of the twisted voice of dark euphoria in exactly the same manner was a lanky, snake-shaped silhouetted body. The sight was frankly something right out of a child's worst nightmare, "I have flesh again. Wonderful, wonderful flesh," She fizzled in a lazy, snake-esque drawl, slithering up from the well in a spine-chilling reminiscent manner of a spouting flower.

"And now, the jewel; I can sense it! I must obtain it!"

XxX

(Elsewhere – Inuyasha's forest)

A pair of golden eyes was revealed when two once closed eyelids finally opened up.

"Yowza!" The dog-eared teen sputtered out in surprise, looking at the roots that made a convenient straitjacket for him with something akin to relief in his eyes, "Thought it woulda took a shit-ton amount of time to get outta this power-nap, but hey, I ain't complaining."

With a couple of tussles of his shoulders with a mild focused expression on his visage, the dog-boy made a show of flexing his arms powerfully to the sides, forcing every single root that were once wrapped around his body to simply explode off of him in a shower of splinters.

"Booyah!" He boasted, confidently jerking a thumb at himself, "Who said ya could keep a dog leashed up?" He asked himself, a mock-disdainful look on his countenance. Bending his knees, the silver-haired boy leaped off of his perch with such potency, the entire vine he was previously standing on completely plummeted to the now cratered ground.

As the exhilarated red-clad boy landed in a sloppy, ungraceful four-legged crouch, a gleeful smirk crossed his face. He didn't need to turn around to know he had cratered the ground with his leap, he could just smell the soil and crumbled ground exuding a cloud of dirt.

Standing up with his head lowered so his bangs covered his golden irises, the excited silver-haired boy let his arms fall aimlessly to his sides. Taking in a clear audible deep breath to the point his upper chest welled up like a balloon, he threw his head backward, "It feels wonderful to be alive!" He roared euphorically, flinging his arms outward as if he was challenging anyone to take him on.

Feeling some of his newfound electrification put to rest for the time being, the silver-haired boy's fanged smirk grew at the whiff of a similar scent, "Now then, I think it's high-time I pay my jailor a little… visit." He said, rolling his arm around in a circular-motion to work out the kinks, "Might just cop myself a little feel of her own puppies," His smirk softened to a grin of mischievousness, "Bitch owes me that much anyway, so yeah. I'm entitled to my end of the bargain. Hahaha!" Lowering himself to the ground, the boy _quickly_ counted down from three, "3-2-1… GO!"

Kicking off of the ground again, his momentum carried him several feet into the sky as if he was a grasshopper. Even when gravity brought him back down to earth, he again jumped into the sky, heading in the direction of an old acquaintance of his; the woman who bound him to the sacred tree in the first place.

He would show her.

He would show everyone.

They had better watch out because Inuyasha was on the loose!

* * *

><p><span>Delated scene<span>

A pair of golden eyes was revealed when two once closed eyelids finally opened up. With a flash of crimson flaring wildly about in a swinging motion, the vines that had once covered the sleeping Dog-beast was broken off of him in an instant.

"Heh. I can smell it," He stated, a small, vindictive smirk spreading across his visage, "The blood of the bitch who killed me," He could feel Goosebumps of exhilaration seeping all across his skin, "Payback, she'll learn it's a dish served best cold."

Once he would leap off of the vine, his bare feet would touch grassy foil in an ungraceful heap. Huffing slightly, the red-clad, long silver-haired boy's smirk was long gone, and on his countenance was a far more known expression; a prominent scowl giving him an intimating aura.

"Feh. If that bitch thought one measly spell could contain me then she's got another thing coming," He grumbled in a tone of annoyance, preparing to take off via bending his knees.

Letting go of his straining body, the red clad boy soared through the air like an eagle, his glower seemingly becoming more determined the further he travelled.

"The bitch is in for a reality check when I get my claws on her," He said in righteous fury, gravity bringing him back down to earth before he kicked off of it again as if he was a red-clad grasshopper, "Heh. They could use a bit of sharpening anyway after that power-nap she gave me, so its win-win either way, ha-ha."

His arrogant sniggers would carry on travelling across the sky and even ascend his destination in mind.

* * *

><p><strong>And that's all, peeps. There are some noticeable additions and changes from last chapter. Specifically, Naruko's hair, which was said to be styled as twin braids. That was a mistake. It's really twin ponytails and she hadhas goggles over her forehead which is why she has her headband around her neck. **


	3. Demons? No Sweat

**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Inuyasha**

* * *

><p>That day Kaede observed the two foreign girls happily interact (with each other) like they had known each other for years. She would like to say she was just exaggerating, but she really wasn't. Naruko and Kagome hadn't taken long to warm up to each other, but Kaede supposed that was partially due to their personas. They both had such jovial demeanours that before the three women had even reached Kaede's primitive hut the young girls had already started up a friendly conversation.<p>

They had both told each other the name of their homelands, making it clear that they didn't come from the same place. Whatever these 'Konoha' or 'Tokyo' 'villagers' were, Kaede could say with gusto that she had never heard of them in her long fifty years of life. Still, despite their different upbringings, both girls were shockingly taken aback once they walked into Kaede's diminutive hut, asking for a whole bunch of rare gadgets that wouldn't be found over in Kaede's little village even on a lucky night.

It left Kaede slightly suspicious to see each girl know exactly what the other was trying to describe to her.

"Are ye positive ye children have never before met each other's acquaintance? Because I am fairly certain ye know each other just from thy congenial interaction thus far," Kaede questioned now that a fairy quarter moon hang up in the clouded, darkened sky. Kaede didn't even have a glass window. The little space in the corner that acted as Kaede's 'window' had three wooden bars-like beams closing off the space while still leaving plenty on view to the outside world.

Kagome's small sigh of leniency would elicit a good-natured giggle from her supposed 'long-time' friend/maybe relative in Kaede's single eye. At this point, Kagome figured she would need the hands and feet of both her and Naruko to count the excessive amount of times Kaede had regurgitated that particular question.

"Gosh. How many times do we have to tell you Miss Kaede, Naruko-chan and I have never met before?" Kagome said, her voice set in a high-pitched comical wail, which of course made Naruko laugh even harder, "It's not funny, Naruko-chan!"

Upon sensing her new companion's discomfort at the run-on gag, Naruko stifled her laughter instantly. Instead, she tried to placate Kagome with a kind smile, "Aw, don't worry about it. I can see why Granny-One-eye would mistake us as comrades," Her tone was openly jovial as she suggested this to fairly justify Kaede's suspicion of their familiarity.

Kaede barely acknowledged the friendly barb thrown at her by Naruko, and instead turned around in her Seiza-position to stir the stew within an old-fashioned pot brewing over a campfire-like wall fire.

Naruko had considered giving her the nickname 'Granny Cyclops,' but was forced to scrap that name seeing how primitive Kaede's hut was, something she conveniently called 'home.' It didn't even have a real bed, much less a TV to be exposed to the wonders of animated Cyclopes.

The bottom-line was, she may end up taking that barb more offensively than Naruko had originally intended.

"After all, they say great minds think alike y'know," Naruko finished with a huge smile.

"I g-guess you're right if you look at it from that perspective," Kagome hesitantly compensated, nervously massaging her arm.

Kagome didn't think the source that stored her knowledge and average-sized vocabulary was any better than any other regular high schoolgirl her age. Gosh, her test score wasn't high enough to even make the top ten of the smartest students let alone top five in her school.

So Kagome would have to internally, yet politely disagree with Naruko's assessment. She wasn't a dullard, but she wasn't a brain maniac either. No, Kagome's intellect was justttttt right.

The two whirled around at the sound of pouring slimy liquid resonating in Kaede's small, badly unfurnished hut to see the elder herself serving a bowl of the stew she had prepared.

With a wordless nod, the old elder past the bowl over to Naruko, who accepted it gratefully.

"Thanks!" Naruto beamed, using the palms of her hands as a makeshift tray for the bowl Kaede gave her. When she could feel no heat coming from the bottom of the bowl, she gave it a blank knock at the bottom, causing a dull sound to resonate through Kaede's hut.

Kagome studied her observant friend with a blank expression on her visage, "What is it, Naruko-chan?"

"This bowl's just a broken-in-half coconut." Naruko answered studiously, then straightened her head and bought the bowl back to her lap, breathing in deeply to lull the increasing fear building up inside of her heart.

Kagome slowly blinked her eyes in stupefaction, "Eh?" She carefully reached out her hands when Kaede offered her a bowl, giving her a mute nod in gratitude before she regurgitated Naruko's previous motions and actions step by step, earning herself an expression of petrified recognition.

"You're right," Kagome gasped, her voice frighteningly, and faint-heartedly low, "It is a coconut."

"It should not surprise ye." Kaede insisted, her elderly stoicism not breaking in light of the two mysterious girls' wary fascination of her village's cutlery, "Such rare materials ye might be considering art scarce in a simple destitute village such as ours."

Whilst Kagome blinked, trying to process the insinuation of Kaede's calm confession, Naruko had already clocked onto it, "So you're saying the big-shots around here own all the expensive stuff normal folks like us crave for," Naruko proclaimed plainly, first pointing an index finger at Kaede but drawing her hand back in to hold her entire arm out to the side to indicate all of them as a whole.

Kaede confirmed with a mute nod, though a slight wide-eyed look of incredulity fell on her face due to her mind experiencing minor difficulty trying to come to terms with the blond-haired girl's speech mechanisms.

"Aye, child," The one-eye elderly cyclops outwardly confirmed, "That is correct. If ye art fortunate enough to be born under royal bloodline ye wouldst be privileged with the quintessence of essentials."

"How awful!" Kagome cried, her eyes lowering in contemplative sadness, "Couldn't they share with the people who are less fortunate than them Kaede-san?"

"Afraid not child," Kaede said sagely, closely monitoring Kagome's face scrunch up from bitter-frustration to sad acceptance, 'Aye. Perhaps Kagome is the reincarnation of thee after all, onee-sama, Kikyo," Only years of experience allowed her to school her expression to keep the mournful look off of her wizen face.

Unfortunately for the elderly cyclops, while she was giving Kagome a contemplative size-up, she missed Naruko sending her a serious expression of deep thinking of her own, complete with squinted eyes, 'Hmm. I don't know like the looks of that. Could it possibly have something to do with why she'd Kagome-chan tied up?' Naruko mused.

She didn't want to be too hasty by jumping to the conclusion of Kaede considering Kagome a threat. That course of action would essentially defeat the purpose of Kakashi-sensei's mandate; 'Look underneath the underneath,' which translated to, "Things are not always as they seem so find the deeper meaning."

The blond knew from experience that sometimes knowing her enemies/allies could be the key different between winning and losing.

Moreover, Naruko was shrewd enough to know if she wanted to decipher Kaede's thoughts, she couldn't be so plainly blunt as she tended to be in social interaction with folk.

"Hey, Granny. Lemme ask you something," Deception was the name of the game. Keep your visage one of neutrality, don't give any signals away that could tip them off to your true intentions, and lastly, but certainly not least, wait for their response.

Naruko observed Kaede seamlessly break her observation of Kagome without giving a hint that she had been doing so to gaze into Naruko's bland eyes in an undeniable scrutinizing fashion. The blond ponytailed girl silently winced after just barely suppressing a shiver of doubt surging through her.

It was like Naruko was on trial about to be passed judgement via the judge.

"Aye, child," Kaede allowed, choosing to elaborate further on the subject when she sensed Naruko's distress, "If thee is in need of guidance please do not fret to come to me," Seeing Naruko's heedful look of apprehension, Kaede swept her left arm out in an inviting fashion, "I do not wish to oppress thee, child."

"Uhh. Didn't think you did, Granny," Naruko attempted to assure, however the sheepish grin that automatically curved itself across her visage exposed her.

A vacant expression of engrossment relief took the place of an uncomfortable grimace on the countenance of Kagome as she switched from studying her stew to studying Naruko, 'I wonder what Naruko-chan could want to ask of Miss Kaede. Maybe the villagers' accusation of us being demons has her worried of being hurt by those nasty creeps,' Kagome was able to frown amidst the concern-exterior, 'Naruko-chan doesn't seem so worried at the possibility of getting hurt by the proverbial bogey-man. I wonder why that is, she's only a young girl.'

A girl bit on the tomboyish side, what with her sat in an unfeminine leg-crossed position and wearing equally unwomanly garments, but she was a teenage girl nonetheless. Surely, it was only logical of Kagome to believe that like her, Naruko would be equivalently doomed if she, by some stroke of unfortunate fate, ran into one of these mythological evil menaces.

"Uh, forget about that," Naruko said, waving one of her hands in an act of dismissal, "What I really wanted to ask you was why you seemed so suspicious of Kagome," She continued, pointing at a blankly blinking Kagome.

"Me?" The topic of said question intoned uncertainly.

Naruko nodded, not allowing her cerulean eyes to leave Kaede's one watchful glance, "Not to say it won't do well in your best-interest to be suspicious, but you and the other villagers seemed outright paranoid, Granny."

Kagome switched her inquisitive look to Kaede, nosily surveying her judge Naruko for what seemed like a lengthy amount of time. Those passing moments reminded Kagome how much she missed her mother's cuckoo clock. If no one dared to talk then the clock's convenient bell could be the wake-up call the two would need to kick start their conversation.

Alas, the Stone Age era hadn't advanced that far in technology, hence the omission of cuckoo-clocks were self-explanatory.

The ice was ultimately broken by Kaede's sigh, "Thee art most perceptive young one," She complimented, elegantly resting the palms of her hands on her knees, momentarily closing her eye to allow her wrinkled visage to linger on a sincere expression of approval. It was because of that was why Naruko's mischievous grin slipped right past her mind's eye.

'O, you don't have a clue how far from the truth you would've been five months ago, Granny,' Naruko mulled, making Kagome gasp at how defined her Cheshire-cat grin was.

'She looks just like a cat!' Kagome internally exclaimed, hands covering her mouth. No sooner had the words been processed did sorrow fill Kagome's eyes, 'Buyo,' A small feline with an eternal sly grin on its whiskered face appeared in her mind, in sync with her moving hands that now covered her heart, 'I gotta get back. Somehow.'

"Please excuse our earlier hostility. We truly mean ye no harm young ones," Kaede explained, showing the young teen girls a passive regretful expression on her aged features, "However, in such a dire time we unprosperously find ourselves in, caution is a must if we art to survive. No outsider comes into our village without first being treated to a speck of distrust."

Naruko picked up on the implications as easily as she would lift up a bowl of ramen, "You mean the demons, right?" She asked plainly, not missing Kagome flinch out of the corner of her eye.

"It is most difficult to put into words, child, as thee is partly correct," Kaede murmured with slight repentance in her tone, "Humans art also guilty of invading our small village trying to forcefully take what little valuables we have in our possession."

"No way," Kagome whispered in a disbelieving tone while Naruko's face remained an unreadable mask of detachment, "Who would do such a thing."

"Indeed, child, but I fear it only gets worst," Kaede mumbled regretfully, eliciting a wince from Kagome.

"By 'worst' you must mean be the demons, huh?" Naruko questioned bluntly, earning herself a major gap from Kagome.

'How can Naruko-chan be so calm about all of this, gosh?' Kagome mused frantically, a slight frustrated look underneath the more predominant gawking-surface at not knowing Naruko's secret to being so relaxed.

"Aye." Naruko was just a little too undisturbed with the demon-subject for Kaede's comfort. The elder had to prove her aged intuition right, "Am I to take it thee have had an encounter with a demon my dear?"

Kagome whirled her head so fast to Naruko it looked to all the world that she had double heads, "Naruko-chan?" She asked with inextinguishable fear in her voice.

"Yeah I have," Naruko admitted, eliciting a high-pitched wince from Kagome at her blunt honesty, "Only last night in fact. The guy was insanely strong, physically speaking, but lacked any skill or finesse. I was able to use that against him to kick his tiger-ass to the curb."

"…"

"Thee were able to subdue a demon without any assistance?" Kaede asked, using her initial gawk as a mask to disguise the incredulity across her face.

'Wow,' Was all Kagome could think of at the current moment of time.

"Uhh. Yeah…" Naruko mumbled, awkwardly rubbing the back of her head with Kagome openly gaping at her, "It was nothing really. I gave the guy the old one, two, POW, right in the kisser, and he ran off with his tail between his legs."

Kagome quickly clamped her hands on her mouth, 'She scared away a demon! Wow, can Naruko-chan really be that strong?'

"I see," Kaede said, not outwardly revealing anything with her features set in a stony mask of stoicism, "I believe thou crudely mentioned something regarding this demon's pelvis, referring to it as a tiger's," Kaede started, holding up her left hand in a pray sign as if even mentioning the word 'crude' was a sin against god, "So I have to ask, did thou encounter a member of the tiger-tribe?"

"Hmmm, lemme think," Naruko said pensively, propping a finger on her chin, "Well he had the kanji for tiger on his left peck, had stripes all over his body, andddd, uh," She shook her head, "Nope. I think that's it," She suddenly snapped her fingers, "Wait. White hair, that's it. He also had white hair and hard skin. So, yeah; does that classify him, Granny?"

"Verily, It does, child," Kaede insisted, "It is a legitimately remarkable feat that thou art sitting here before us having faced such a formidable foe."

"Aw, shucks, but It was nothing," Naruko insisted, trying to downplay her survival as if she had won something as mundane as a sparring match, a sheepish smile on her face.

Kagome stared at her in wonder, 'It was nothing?'

"Aye. I recognize thee may not be as helpless as I had been first led to believe by thy small structure," Kaede said calmly, earning herself a pout from Naruko at the small insult disguised as a compliment, "However, I wouldst advise ye both to tread with caution if ye have plans to continue thy journeys. The tiger tribe art woefully not the only group of demons that inhabit the land. Many more can be found, each with their own extraordinary traits and endowments."

Kaede paused, looking down at her lap as if she was unsure whether or not she should tell the young futuristic girls the rest.

Kagome, noticing her hesitance, couldn't help but ask, "What? What is it Kaede-san?"

When Kaede looked up, the most haunted, zombie-like lifeless expression could be found on her withered visage. It was even enough to make Kagome wince, "Larger parts of these tribes have been known to eat humans, my dears."

"Eep," Kagome yelped quietly, an absolute petrified expression on her countenance, "Err, say. You wouldn't mind repeating that, would you? Y'know, so I can be sure I won't get eaten by the proverbial bogey-man, haha," The black haired schoolgirl nervously laughed, not sure whether she was joking or not.

Luckily for Kagome, Naruko and Kaede already knew she wasn't. She was just praying to all the mighty gods of the great beyond to be reassured that there weren't any people-eaters stalking around in a time she was unfortunate enough to be trapped in.

"It is why the recommendation I offer thee is one of grave significance, dear," Kaede said earnestly, all but reaffirming her statement. As she watched Kagome hang her head in despondency with an emphatic-glance, she instructed, "Thee understand, aye? If thee is intent of preceding further, thee must do so with caution." Her single eye locked with Kagome's as if she was a terminator, "The next step thee take outside of this village, could very well be thy last if thee is not heedful enough. Is thee having any difficulty deciphering my message, child?"

Kagome gave her two, brief shakes of her head, but didn't remove her eyes from her stew.

Kaede lightly breathed through her nostrils after studying Kagome with a sympathetic-gaze before turning to look at Naruko, who had been slowly absorbing her words like a sponge.

"And what of thou, child?" Kaede asked, narrowing her single eye to better examine Naruko's pensive whiskered features.

Naruko's answer, for her, was ridiculously predictable. In fact, she could feel the words leaving her mouth before her brain even had the chance to process them completely, "No need to worry about me, Granny. I'm tough, y'know? I can look after myself," Kagome gasped, her mouth in agape at Naruko's audacity.

In the next instance Kagome contemplated asking Naruko to lend two things. The first was her spunk, and the second was her steel stomach, because she couldn't help but grimace cutely watching Naruko bring the bowl up to her mouth and shamelessly drink the stew from it as if she was finishing the last bits of a delicious soup.

'Ewww. How can Naruko-chan stand to eat this stuff?' Kagome mulled over, once again noticing how tomboyish Naruko looked.

Unfortunately for her, Kaede caught the last sight of her grimace before she could completely wipe it off of her face to replace it with mild dejection, "Thou do not like my stew, I can deduce."

Kagome twirled her head to the elder's direction with a startled look, "No, it's not that. It's just," Kagome hesitated, putting on an amused smile to buy some time, 'Great. How can I tell Kaede-san her stew looks like ghoul-soup?' She reflected with minor sarcasm, "It just isn't what I'm used to," She lied with a bright smile on her face, 'Whew! I did it!'

Kaede smiled ruefully, "If thou do not wish to finish thy stew, I wo-." But Kaede's sentence would be lost to the world when a deafening detonation thundered across her village, startling Naruko and Kagome so much the two accidentally let their bowls slip from their hands, the former at more of a consequence here.

"Whoa! What is that?" Kagome cried with noticeable panic in her voice as she shakily looked to her side to see her cocoanut containing her stew knocked upside down, spilling the contents all over the floor. Even as the callous explosions of shattering wood continuously reverberated throughout the air, Kagome couldn't stop the twinge of relief from welling up inside of her.

Phew. Now she had a reason not to eat that stew.

Kaede was up to her feet with the speed of someone half her age. In the timespan of two and a half seconds, Kaede had gone from the corner of her small hut to retrieve a quiver of arrows and a bow bigger than her diminutive body, to her front door with the case of arrow sheathed to her back as if it was a scabbard.

"Oh, I like not the sounds of this," Kaede murmured, rushing out the front door.

Kagome was on the verge of following her out until she noticed Naruko angrily swatting a fairly huge mud-shape ball of spilled stew off of her bosom, "Oh boy, oh boy, my only blouse just got caught up in the crossfire," The blond tomboy mumbled acerbically.

"Naruko-chan," Naruko stopped wiping her blouse free of any excess stew, frowning down at the big nasty brown smudge on her blouse as Kagome tapped her on her shoulder, "C'mon. I think it would be a good idea to stay close to Kaede-san."

"Um," Naruko hummed noncommittally, but otherwise didn't outwardly protest. She knew staying indoors was out of question with the ear-splitting sounds of erupting wood making it clear as day that multiple huts were being blown-up, it was just that she realized there was a decent chance she would have to keep Kagome close to her.

Her woman's intuition told her Kagome wasn't the most adequate of fighters.

"Sure thing, Kagome," Naruko offered her fellow concerned teenager a grin radiating sublime confidence. Leaning her upper body up in a squat-position, Naruko sprung herself to her feet with a buoyant leap, "Let's roll."

Kagome smiled in relief, leading the way out of Kaede's hut. Once Kagome's head past the entrance curtain leading to Kaede's hut, she wished she had the ability to go back in time and tell her five seconds past-self not to. Standing beside an equivalently terrified Kaede, Kagome would see three small wooden huts all explode into a myriad of wooden splinters as if a detonating bomb had been attached to them.

The guilty party, from what a shaking Kagome could see standing next to a petrified Kaede, was an extremely lengthy long dark red serpent-like tail with multiple crab-esque tiny hands fastened to the sides of the snake-like tail, which was in a cartwheel motion mowing down huts and trampling on anyone who got its way.

"Give me the Shikon no tama!" A echoing feminine voice fizzled out in a demanding fashion, slithering up its snake-like tail to tower over the fleeing puny humans beneath her, giving her victims a one-last opportunity to see their tormentor in a full-glimpse of her horrifying sculpture.

Only the hastily assembled ragtag group of females consisting of Naruko, Kaede, and Kagome would glance at the snake-like creature's body, yet it was only Naruko who was spotting her for the first time. The blond ponytailed girl found it eerie creepy that the creature had a curvaceous body of an attractive woman at the age of twenty, yet had six normal-looking spider-like arms fitted at the top of her scorpion-like long tail. She even had long silk black hair and red lipstick painted around her lips.

"It's that thing again!" Kagome pointed out in frightened acknowledgment.

"What the heck is that thing?" Naruko asked with a glare aimed the slayer, clenching her fists tight at her sides in anticipation for a battle.

"Mistress Centipede," Kaede murmured out in surprise, earning herself inquisitive looks from Naruko and Kagome, "But how is she here? She was slayed fifty years ago by Inuyasha, only to be tossed down the Bone-eater's wall so she couldn't regenerate, unless," The elderly archer whirled on Kagome, narrowing her single eye in intense contemplation, 'Unless the Shikon no Tama came back along with onee-sama Kikyo in the form of young Kagome.'

"Unless what, Kaede-san?" Kagome asked, fidgeting a little with Kaede's concentrated gaze on her, 'Is Kaede-san trying to tell me this freak's come for me?' She asked herself, feeling quite dejected all of this destruction had been caused by her stay here.

"Meh. It doesn't either way, 'cause I'm about to send Ms Snake-face back to her bony grave!" Naruko audaciously exclaimed, a feral smirk that made her look like a fox spreading across her features, earning herself a pair of gaps from Kagome and Kaede.

"Wait! Hold on minute. You're not gonna take on that creep all by yourself, are you Naruko-chan?" Kagome asked in a near shrill noise, lowering her voice near the end of her sentence with a look of concern on her face.

Naruko grinned reassuringly, "Ain't got much other choice," She turned her head upright in the west-east direction where a flash of crimson caught her eyes, "Don't think Dog-boy's gonna lend a hand, so it's up to me to take to the front-lines."

As Mistress Centipede continued to scope the village from her nigh bird-eye view, Kaede and Kagome gasped, frantically looking in the direction Naruko had indicated with a jerk of her head. It was on a fellow neighbourhood's hut where Kaede saw a ghost she believed she would only see once she died in all his red, glaring glory.

"Inuyasha! Nay, he was bound to the sacred tree by my onee-sama's arrow. The seal shouldst held forever," Kaede explained, noticing Naruko's sheepish grin, 'Did she free Inuyasha? But why wouldst she do such an audacious thing?'

"Err, he looks pretty mad," Kagome pointed out in a nervous manner, slowly jabbing a timid index finger at the angry eyeballing red-clad boy.

Their attention would be drawn away from the angry dog-based demon by the exhilarated voice of Mistress Centipede, "The Jewel! Give it to me now!" Rapidly spinning her body to the point it resembled a corkscrew, Mistress Centipede air-tunnelled her way to the trio of females.

"Ah! It's coming!" Kagome shrieked, barely noticing a few of the villagers get behind Kaede while Naruko, on the contrary, leaped in front of them all.

"Stay behind me ladies," Naruko commanded, creating a loud audible smack as she clapped her hands together, lacing her fingers together.

"What do thou plan to do, child?" Kaede asked hastily, preparing to duck to the side as Mistress Centipede zoomed down on them.

Naruko smirked secretively, "You'll see. Just hold on tight 'cuz things are about to get bumpy," As her audience blinked in confusion at her cryptic answer, Naruko speedily blurred through hand-signs, eliciting gawks at the speed of her hands as well as how fast she uttered the signs she made, "Tiger, ox, dog, rabbit, snake," With clapped hands, Naruko conjured up an astronomical amount of powerful out-rushing air, so huge in fact it took the shape of a massive vortex, ruthlessly tearing up whatever piece of ground was in Naruko's way.

The initial release of her minor, yet powerful jutsu was even enough to knock Kagome, Kaede and the other survivors down.

"Futon: Daitoppa (Wind Release: Great Wind Breakthrough)!"

Mistress Centipede's spinning-top charge was halted instantly, "W-Wha-." She wouldn't even get the chance to finish her sentence before the freaky powerful tornado carried her away against her will, slamming her to the unforgiving dirt ground below.

"What power," Kaede whispered out in an awed whisper, slowly rising to her feet whilst Kagome and the others remained frozen in static-mode.

"I-I g-guess she really is strong," Kagome murmured on her knees, not sure what-else there was to be said to describe the massive torrent of air Naruko had created just by weaving her hands together so fast Kagome couldn't even see what she was shaping.

"Me hope she on our side," A random nondescript villager said in a hushed voice, not wanting to get on the powerful young girl's bad side.

As Naruko slowly turned to regard them all in what looked to be a cool manner, they almost fell down again in comical shock when a nervous, goofy smile of a guilty child found its way to her face, "Uh. Granny, that Inuyasha-guy wouldn't happen to be evil by any chance, would he? Hehe."

Kaede's single visible eye dilated slightly in bewilderment. One minute Naruko had showcased power putting her on a pedestal with the top dogs of the land, and the next she was back to acting like a kid. It was refreshing to see someone so powerful, yet not nearly as arrogant as one tended to be when they had power.

"Hm. It is difficult to say with Inuyasha, child," Kaede said reasonably, surveying Naruko wipe the imaginary sweat from her brow with the back of her palm.

"Phew. There's my conscious wiped clean," She grinned, turning back to the downed Mistress Centipede, "O, and don't worry about Dog-boy up there. I'll deal with him once I'm finished burying this bitch again, believe it." With arms tucked behind her, Naruko sprinted away from the group, all of them only seeing a bright blond sparkle of a fragment of her in the distance.

"Naruko-chan!" Kagome's plea would be hugely lost to the wind, "Be careful," She murmured with her hands grasped together in a pray sign. Although when the futuristic schoolgirl took a look at the wide berth of mangled ground, she had to dryly add, 'Though it's not like you need it when you can literally create a giant hurricane on the spot.'

"Lady Kaede, what she mean?" A villager asked.

Kaede narrowed her one eye in the distance before switching her glance to the tilted over form of Inuyasha, "Please do not heed yourself with such. I do believe we can trust Naruko's words," She declared.

After all Naruko did just prevent Mistress Centipede's attack from injuring and possibly maiming some of them.

XxX

**Chapter **

Demons?

No Sweat!

**Three**

(With Inuyasha)

XxX

"Whoa! That girl's insane!" Inuyasha gaped, pulling himself up in a squatted position. He couldn't help but stare with dilated eyes of extended shock at the long gush in the earth the strange girl had made with just one overwhelming attack.

"Man, from here it looks like a fucking bear just took its claw and decided to go treasure hunting in this sap of a village," He remarked flippantly, scratching his scalp with a blank expression on his countenance. He didn't even think she wasn't human otherwise he would've picked up on her distinct scent in an instant. That wasn't to say he didn't expect her to be human because she had such a massive amount of sheer destructive power. He had seen a human or two rivalling the girl's power, so he definitely surmised she was a top-tier warrior among her people.

"She's almost as strong as that bitch Kikyo," He said pensively, crossing his arms, though his expression darkened at the mention of the aforementioned competent archer, "Speaking of said bitch, what the hell is she doing while all this action's going on?"

Surprised overtook his malevolent look when he found 'Kikyo' sat on her knees, supposedly watching the girl smack the stuffing out of Mistress Centipede, "K-Kikyo, the fuck are you doing?" He murmured shakily, a bead of sweat rolling down his cheek, "Don't tell me even you've been fodderized, gal."

And suddenly, the worrisome foreign feeling of concern for an old friend was washed away by a tide of a cruel need to rub this fact in her face.

"Heh-heh-heh! This is rich! The mighty Kikyo, fodder! Just like those unknown chumps who think they can fire an arrow, when in reality they can't shoot for shit!" He sniggered, shooting up to his feet. He eyed his prey with a mischievous glint in his golden left pupil, a teasing fanged smirk on his face.

"I think I'll make my acquaintance with an old friend. Heh. Who knows, with any luck we might just end up burying the hatches."

Or he might just end up burying her.

Either-way works just fine.

XxX

(Naruko vs Mistress Centipede)

XxX

Mistress Centipede hissed out a painful groan, raising her human-like head off of the damaged ground. She angrily tried to wipe away the cobwebs from her head, "Who could've done that? Surely it couldn't have been a mere human who released that kind of devastating power!"

She caught an orange blur in her peripheral vision before it materialized to reveal a petite girl with shockingly bright yellow hair, "Hey-ya," She answered with a happy, cheeky smile on her whiskered-visage.

Mistress Centipede's eyes dilated in abject horror at such bizarre otherworldly speed. It wasn't even visible to her naked eyes, "You were the cause of that phenomenal release of power?" She excused with wild debrief, "Impossible! You are just a mere human, a human girl at that!"

Mistress Centipede didn't even get the time to bit back a gasp when the small blond girl disappeared from her sight. She only saw black and felt a wave of tremendous pain surge through her, the starting point being her nose.

"Argh!" She screeched in monumental bleeding agony, lurching her entire body upwards out of reflex. Two of her remaining arms would grasp her assaulted nose, while the last one would attempt to soothe her aching head. She felt really dizzy, almost like she was about to pass out in a pool of her own vomit. She just managed to settle her eyes on Naruko, but the way her vision was spinning in many circles, it made it seem like they were multiple girls of the same person.

"How dare you, you wrenched little girl! I do not know how you came in possession of such power, but it will matter not in the long haul when I slay you and obtain the Shikon no Tama!" She opened her wide mouth in a hissing sneer, showing off her sharp fangs and long snake-like tongue.

Naruko pointed defiantly at her adversary, "Look lady, I dunno what this Shikon-no whatever is, but frankly, I don't give a rat's ass. What I do know however, is you're gonna scram with your tail over your head otherwise you're gonna meet your maker for all the rotten things you did," She clenched her hand into a ball, shaking it threateningly at the creature.

"Oh, how cute; a show of bravado," She mockingly applauded, "Something you can take with you to the great beyond, dearie," She lunged down on Naruko with an extended claw, yet only felt her hand sink into the ground below, and a pair of feet trample up her arms as if they could stick there for the briefest of milliseconds.

The left side of her vision exploded in a flash of bright white light in a torturous push that knocked her head right back. As she howled in anguish, this time grabbing onto her assaulted left eye-socket, she could feel two hands grip onto her long black hair, painstakingly forcing her head downwards.

Visible tears sprung to Mistress Centipede's eyes. She never knew humans could be so underhanded in their tactic manoeuvres. Once her opponent released her, her head sprung forward like a whip, then twirled to glare furiously at the blond twin-ponytailed girl who was preoccupied with standing up from her kneeled position and dusting off her hands.

"How can you be a human when you possess such impressive speed? Unless you're really a demon taken human-form. That would perfectly explain your unusual level of speed and hair, dearie," Miss Centipede rationalized.

Naruko cleaned out her ear, a disinterested expression on her face, "You'll make up everything to feel better about your whuppin' won't you, Miss Sore loser?" She taunted, finding cruel amusement in seeing Mistress Centipede scowl ferociously, "O, and just for the record, my hair's all natural, and a lot nicer-looking than yours, lady," A broad grin washed over her countenance.

Mistress Centipede frowned at the last portion of Naruko's sentence, "Oh, please, dearie. I've seen gorgeous hair in my long life and I know yours isn't what they would consider the quintessence of beautiful."

"They so would!" Naruko doggedly insisted, sticking her bottom lip out to look tough as she stomped her right leg forward, two tightening fists clenched firmly at her sides.

"I will not debate with such a brat. Now give me the Shikon no Tama!" Mistress Centipede commanded, hissing violently. She would attack Naruko with an open mouth, her long clear tongue smoothly thrashing in the compass of her mouth, "Arrg!"

Naruko's unnatural spring would carry her away from the mouth that threatened to take a chunk out of her, then gravity would bring her down on the shoulders of Mistress Centipede, "You're just," She started, dirtily taking two huge handfuls out of the demon's hair, pulling back in dogged determination.

Mistress Centipede screeched, unable to stop herself from being lurched upwards from the girl propped on her shoulders, "-Just jealous, you inconsiderate hissy," Naruko finished with a bold roar, driving Mistress Centipede's head toward the ground with a battle-cry.

Before Mistress Centipede's head could even be burrowed under the ground, the surrounding ground exploded in an uproar of uprising rocks, a mass of spider-cracks basically engulfing the pancaked Mistress Centipede's head.

And Naruko just mercilessly added a couple of taunting slaps to Mistress Centipede's head.

"Now's that? You up for more? I'm game if you are."

The creature just managed a barely coherent tiresome groan.

Her plan to get the Shikon no Tama from that human girl wasn't turning out as she planned.

Wait. She had a plan?


	4. Down Boy

**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Inuyasha **

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter four: <strong>Down Boy

* * *

><p>The villagers and Kagome stood mesmerized by the blond-ponytailed girl's dominating display against Mistress Centipede. Even for such a petite girl, she seemed to be finding absolutely no problem dictating this fight as if she was taking on a toddler less than half her size.<p>

They didn't have a clue what Naruko was doing, but they knew it was working in her favour with the evidence being Mistress Centipede's form thrashing violently every time Naruko appeared near her.

To the spectators, it was like Naruko was teleporting.

"Incredible!"

"She's manhandling the demon so easily, without any trouble at all! What an amazing performance!"

"Or woman-handling!"

"She must be a saviour."

"Ha! I knew the witch was our saviour all along!"

"They sure changed their tune," Kagome commented dryly alongside Kaede, "Still, I can see why. _Gosh, _I can't even tell what Naruko-chan's doing," The black haired girl admitted in a tone of astonishment.

"Do not be alarmed by Naruko's speed, child," Kaede instructed gently, getting a goggled-look from Kagome in return, "Thy eyes art simply not versed enough to keep up with Naruko's superhuman speed. It is nothing to feel ashamed of. I, myself, am likewise experiencing difficulty trying to truce Naruko's movements. She's simply moving too quickly for the eyes to follow, child."

"Yeah, I guess," Kagome shrugged indistinctly, returning to watch the fight between her newfound friend and the demon invader. From her perspective a tiny bright ball of orange similar to a bumble bee was bizarrely buzzing around the demon, occasionally thwacking her in different parts of her body, "I mean, I wouldn't have a chance of seeing Naruko-chan's movements in this case. I never really took the time to study martial arts, what with the mountain of school work I need to get through or else I won't pass my classes."

Kaede tried to offer Kagome an inquisitive expression to urge her in explaining what she meant by 'school-work', but instead her single eye ended up dilating in shock at a flash of grumpy golden irises glancing at Kagome's back between her hut and her neighbour's.

"What?" Kagome blinked, just about catching Kaede's surprised look before the elderly lady switched it to a narrowed-eyed serious one, "Is there something on my face?" She slowly touched her cheek. When she recalled what she had told Kaede, she felt kind of silly for asking, "Oh! You don't know what schoolwork is d-."

"You're pathetic, Kikyo," A snide voice taunted 'Kikyo,' making most jump from the sudden jibe. Kagome and the other villagers widened their eyes at the sight of the once sleeping beast sauntering coolly out of an alley way, arms crossed over his chest. The direction his golden irises were aimed in made it perfectly clear who he was addressing, "A passenger, are we Kikyo? Whoa, you've sure dropped off of your high-horse huh?"

The villagers that watched Inuyasha's every move with wary eyes blinked blankly, suddenly very confused as to why the demon was referring to the young outsider as the highly respected Kikyo.

"What did you call me?" Kagome asked a bit snappily.

Inuyasha frowned, "I called ya by your name dumbass," Kagome was stunned into silence at such impudence, but Inuyasha wasn't finish. A mischievous smirk curved across his face, "Or did all that newfound uselessness of yours go to your brain too," He lifted up one of his folded arms to cup his chin with his hand, a mock-pensive expression on his face, "Looks like it."

"Why you-?" Kagome mumbled angrily, clenching her fists tight at her sides.

A villager took his chance to bravely shoot a bow at Inuyasha, who furiously swatted it away like an annoying pesky mosquito. In response, he ran up to the one who'd fired at him, completely disregarding his horrified, panicked expression and instead knocked him to the ground with a straight backhand to his face.

"Fuck off, will ya!" Inuyasha commanded, taking pleasure in the fact the villagers scurried away from him instantly, making sure to drag the recently assaulted one with them too, "You think you lousy lunkheads can hurt me when you couldn't even take care of one little weak-ass demon? Heh. Don't even try to make me laugh, idiots."

Kagome blinked owlishly, feeling an indiscernible amount of fright well up inside of her as she jolted backward, 'W-What? He hasn't come to assist Naruko-chan?'

"Lady Kaede, me thinks we may have greater chance with Centipede," A villager timidly stated in Kaede's ear.

The wise elder eyeballed Inuyasha with a gravely serious scowl of warning on her wizened features, "Inuyasha, I wouldst advise thee to not attack my fellow villagers, lest thee be prepared to face the consequences of thy actions."

"Yeah-Yeah. Whatever Granny-panties," Inuyasha dismissed, lackadaisically rolling his arm out. Kagome could only pout at his rude flippant behaviour, "I would deal with you myself if you didn't look half-dead already, so I'll let life finish off what it started on an old sack of bones."

"Thee art most gracious," Kaede quipped with stony sarcasm, neither releasing nor tightening her hold on her long bow, "May I ask what is thou doing here? What do thee wish to find in this poor village Inuyasha?"

"Gee. You take a five-minute power-nap and your name spreads across the globe like a known Daiyokai. Figures," Inuyasha commented with a wry fanged smirk on his face, paying no heed to the concentrated expression on Kaede's face. Instead, he pointed impudently at a shocked-looking Kagome, "Isn't it obvious? I'm here to give Kikyo a piece of my mind and of course get my kicks-and-giggles in at her expertise." Kagome scowled, lowering her head with clenched fists.

Kaede made a face of recognition, her mouth in an O-shape, "Ah. I can perceive thy misinterpretation."

"Misinterpretation my ass," Inuyasha dismissed assertively, making a face of disgust at Kaede before pointing sharply at Kagome's seething form, "The bitch is standing right in front of me enit? So I'm gonna call her out. It doesn't take a genius to put two-and-two together."

"Kikyo, Kikyo, Kikyo," Kagome finally muttered, her annoyance increasing every time the now tainted name slipped past her lips, "Whoever she is I _am not_ her!" She stubbornly declared, shooting her head up to glare at Inuyasha with her hand on her hip, "My name is Kagome! Ka-go-me! Get it right!"

Inuyasha flexed a scowling expression of perplexity, "Eh? What are you yapping on about? You gotta be her, otherwise there's no way you could smel-." Before the word of his signature tracking trait could leave his lips, his nose was already wrinkling, taking in the similar, yet distinct scent that was clearly incompatible to hers, "Hm. Whaddya know, you really ain't her," The silver-haired dog-demon murmured with surprised recognition, shrugging casually, "Derp on me."

"Told ya so!" Kagome said victoriously.

"You're right," Inuyasha muttered, abruptly twirling away from Kagome, "Shoulda known. Kikyo was hotter," A dumbfounded Kagome would be completely oblivious to Inuyasha's gleaming troublesome golden orbs, "Much hotter. Just sayin'."

'I can't believe he just said that? What a jerk!' Kagome pouted.

"Allow me to obtain the Shikon no Tama brat!" Mistress Centipede's loud hissing voice filled with supreme anguish rang out throughout the air, reminding everyone of Naruko's fight with the centipede-demon.

Inuyasha whirled around in the fight's direction, all the jest and playfulness gone from his visage, 'The jewel's nearby? Where is it?' Frantically looking around while disregarding the old one-eye archer's studying look, Inuyasha sent his nose into overtime, sniffing in every direction on a known compass.

His powerful sense of smell picked up on the jewel's elegant, mesmerizing scent coming from the girl who resembled Kikyo so much.

'Her?' Inuyasha mused with major debrief, 'She's got the jewel?'

Kagome nervously clenched her fists when she saw Mistress Centipede's severed arms attempting to reattach themselves to her body with a spiritual pink glow surrounding them, but for Naruko who smacked the arms out of the air as if they were bugs.

"Look, they're trying to rearm," Kagome murmured with noticeable worry laced in her voice.

Inuyasha just stared blankly at the girl before him, trying to decipher where in the nine hells of cats could she be hiding the jewel. Surely, she had it. She was pretty much drenched in its intoxicating scent.

Looking the girl up and down, he couldn't help but sneakily admire her long creamy legs. Fortunately for the ogling silver-haired boy, a pinkish shiny glow would catch his attention just inches from Kagome's standing position, taking his leering eyes off of her luscious limps.

"What the fuck's that?" He whispered curiously, trucing the luminosity back to its source, right underneath Kagome's raised right arm. He openly gaped, pointing boldly at Kagome's side, "Hey, stupid! Look at your side!"

Kagome rounded on the rude-boy in a rage. She had only just met the teen but already she wanted strangle him into unconsciousness. Even those cute puppy dog ears of his weren't enough for Kagome to simply abide by his impertinence.

"What did you just call me?" Kagome sharply commanded, intent on giving the Dog-eared boy a piece of her mind after she had complied with his harsh suggestion.

Curiosity was a jerk like that.

Her other goal of castigating Inuyasha would be completely forgotten when her sea-blue pupils would get trapped in an dazzling illusion emitting around her kidney area, giving off a pink luminescence that had no problem shining through her clothes.

"Uh, what's happening?" Kagome whispered hesitantly, having spent enough time in school to know for a definite fact people don't just randomly glow, especially in the middle of a fight for their survival.

The other villagers were in complete awe at the sight of Kagome glowing. Even Inuyasha stood in studfasction.

"What's going on?"

"She's glowing!"

"Yeah! But how she glow like that? Do people glow?"

"She must really be a witch just like that other girl who's fighting the demon?"

"Lady Kaede, do thou not know what going's on?"

"Aye, I do actually," Kaede answered, making Inuyasha and Kagome round on her. Even though she closed her single eye in calm contemplation, the elder could still feel their eyes on her, "Perhaps, in this case, it wouldst be more accurate to say I have a theory."

"Well!" Inuyasha demanded, firmly crossing his arms in impatience, "If you've got something to say, then spill it already."

Taking a moment to compose herself, as if thoroughly thinking of her decision to bring this potential revelation to light, completely ignoring the tortuous screams of Mistress Centipede that continued to reverberate through the distant night air, Kaede reopened her eye with a hardened gaze to it.

"I believe young Kagome is the reincarnation of my onee-sama, Kikyo. Wouldst not make sense for the jewel to re-emerge with thee one it went with to the otherworld?" Kaede said in an argumentative tone, drawing gasps from the entirety of the remaining villagers and more distinctly, Inuyasha himself, who took a step back in petrified remembrance, "Ah. It would see thee finally remember, Inuyasha?"

Recalling what the villagers referred to the elder as, Inuyasha got a faint glimpse of a much younger Kaede standing next to her much taller sister while wearing an orange Kimono. Back then she had both her eyes, too, "So you're the squirt huh?" Kaede nodded, something akin to a sad glint shining in her eye as her height was brought up, "Damn. Life sure has taken a number on you, Granny."

"Fifty years has passed, and I have grown old," Kaede stated in passive grief.

"Yeah," Inuyasha mumbled in an impassive tone.

Kagome stared at Inuyasha in wonder, trying to decipher between the lines where he went from a joking, impudent goofball to an emotionless hard-ass. Admittedly, she felt some remorse for him. He had been forced into a fifty year hibernation and now he was awakening to a world where his friend had already passed.

It was pretty heart-breaking to think about.

'Poor guy,' Kagome offered Inuyasha's back an expression of sympathy.

Now went Inuyasha turned around to gaze at Kagome, she noticed all the jest and playfulness were gone from his eyes, not even a sneer lingered on his features. He stared at her with total apathy, "So, lemme hear it Grandma, if what you say is true then Kikyo's-." He didn't need to finish his sentence. The weight of his words were enough.

Ironically, Kaede's silence was the only answer he needed.

"So that's how it is," Inuyasha mumbled cryptically, the shadows of his bangs darkening his eyes.

"Inuyasha," Kagome whispered empathically, half-attempted to soothe Inuyasha's clear emotional pain by offering him a few carefully picked words. Sure he was rude to her, but even he didn't deserve to lose his friend. No one did. Kagome hadn't even stayed in this time for a day, and already she missed her family.

Maybe she and Inuyasha could find some common ground here?

…And maybe Inuyasha could not be so frisky with her?

"Hey, let me go!" Kagome demanded, desperately trying to wriggle her wrist free of Inuyasha's vice lock grip. Kaede's eye dilated in alarm at the sight and her villagers ran behind her, arrows and bows lock-and-loaded just in case.

"Feh. Not a chance." Inuyasha coolly dismissed her order.

"Inuyasha," Kaede said in a sharp warning tone, "I wouldst advise thou to release Kagome this instant. Why, the child has done nothing to warrant thy wrath."

"And?" Inuyasha asked challengingly, completely at ease even though Kagome thrashed around in his steel grip, "She has the golden ticket I need to become a full-fledged demon. You think I'm gonna let this opportunity slip past my claws? Heh. Fuck no! The big guns are already out on the battlefield, so why shouldn't I take the chance while it's presented to nab what's mine?"

Kagome's survival instinct disregarded most of Inuyasha's statement barring the part where he mentioned the most proficient fighter already had her hands preoccupied, leaving her unprotected, 'He must be wary of Naruko-chan's strength!'

"I understand," Kaede mumbled reluctantly, hardening her aged visage into a stern mask of utter seriousness, "Thee still require the power of the Shikon no Tama to become a full-fledged demon. Why, Inuyasha?" Her features softened slightly, "Why do thee seek out the power of the Shikon jewel when thee know more than any other what malevolent intentions it bequeaths on those who art not of pure hearts?"

"Humph. Like you would understand," Inuyasha grumped, putting a vacant expression of confusion on Kagome's face at his guarded response. If he was just evil, he wouldn't care what Kaede said. He would just take Kagome and go, not sound so touchy like he did here.

Of course when Inuyasha turned back to her with a stern glare, her confusion was pushed aside by fiery determination. Her resolution to free herself of his grip was renewed ten folds, "Now c'mon you. You're gonna gimme the jewel whether you like it or not." As he started pulling her forward, Kagome dug her heels into the ground, desperately trying to hinder his advancement in anyway possible.

"No, I won't! Let go!" She adamantly insisted.

"Yes you are! Quit being a delaying bitch already!" Inuyasha commanded harshly, and that was the last straw for Kagome. She couldn't beat Inuyasha, but she knew someone who maybe could.

"Naruko-chan! Help!"

XxX

(Naruko vs Mistress Centipede)

Naruko stood, regarding the battered form of Mistress Centipede with inquisitive eyes. It seemed like the more damage she inflicted on her the more she seemed adamant in regenerating. Even now, the humiliated centipede withered around, with only one of her six arms still attached to her human-like body, her porcelain skin practically spiked with ugly black-and-blue bruises, her left sclera was bleeding profusely as it resembled a plum, her right one couldn't even blink, and her nose looked disfigured as it bled rapidly; but even still, she tried to recuperate with that strange pink glow enveloped around her injured body.

"The jewel, I need the jewel."

"Is it the jewel that's granting you the ability of infinite regeneration?" Naruko contemplated with a cupped chin, feeling absolutely no remorse glancing at the wreckage state of Mistress Centipede. As far as Naruko was concerned, the creature forfeited her life the moment she chose to attack this small village.

"Uh, guess a good-old fashioned Rasengan will do the trick. I'll just have to ask Granny for any tips to keep you down per-."

"Naruko-chan! Help!"

Naruko halted her proclamation in mid-sentence, whirling around quickly as Kagome's loud cry for help thundered across the village with a desperate ring to her location, "What does Dog-boy want?" Forming her patented criss-cross hand-sign, a pair of identical clouds of smoke submerged into life next to Naruko, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Technique)."

Not every situation you venture blindly into will turn out so rewarding for you in the end, but when it does, _oh, _the pay-off was invaluable. This was definitely the case with Naruko. Regardless of how stupidly naïve she'd been when she'd ignorantly accepted Mizuki's request to sneak into Grandpa-Third's office to steal an important scroll, no one could deny it wasn't worth it in the end. Hell, she probably wouldn't even have become a kunoichi had she turned down the torturous Mizuki's offer for another two years, thanks to her once lousy chakra control.

Thinking back on that whole mini misadventure was almost enough to make Naruko palm her face in exasperation, more specifically how she had 'subdued' the mighty Hokage to steal the Forbidden Scroll of Sealing in the first place. Who would have thought the Hokage would have such a glaring weakness to pretty women? Then again, Kakashi and Ebisu weren't exactly exempt to such a weakness either.

But that wasn't saying much.

Not at all bothered by the twin clouds of smoke that automatically came with her bread-and-butter jutsu, Naruko was already on her way back to whence she came from to assist her new companion before her copies could fully be formed, "You know what to do, ladies. I'm counting on ya! Don't let me down. Okay?" The original shouted over her shoulder.

"Yeah-Yeah. We got it, Boss."

"Keep Miss-Bitch from putting herself back together."

It was clear as day even though it was already night-time that the duo of acerbic blond-clones were not happy at all with their given-employed mundane task.

Why couldn't they get some action?

xXx

(Moments Earlier)

xXx

"Damn it! Don't call in the cavalry," Inuyasha griped, casting a quick, hasted worry-induced glance over his shoulder whilst keeping his iron grip on Kagome's wrist. He only caught a pair of identical white smoke clouds dissipating in the distance before he turned back to the straining Kagome.

"Then let me go, you brute!" Kagome demanded, inadvertently offering Inuyasha a compensation in the heat of the moment. She felt somewhat content to catch her-wannabe captor quickly spinning his head over his shoulder after she had sounded the alarm. Concrete evidence of Inuyasha's wariness of Naruko was exactly what the doctor ordered, for Kagome, "If you don't want me to sound the proverbial alarm, you'll just let go of me like a good boy."

Inuyasha winced at the ease of which his expression was deciphered by the girl in his clasp, but instantly scowled after recalling her jibe at his breed of canidae demon. Smart-alecks always had a wise-guy remark to make about his breed. On another day, aka one not suffering from busy-hour, Inuyasha may have dealt the cheeky young woman a pimp-hand. The here and now obviously was neither the time nor the place for such a punishment.

"Just shut your pie-hole!" Inuyasha ordered with a scarce tremble in his voice, lining Kagome up with his lowered head. His plan was basic enough. Throw the girl over his shoulder, and run for the hills. He enjoyed a good fight as much as the next demon did, but there was a time and place for that. And unfortunately for Inuyasha, that time was now. He couldn't even get his hostage on his shoulder before a rock-solid, piercing blow of a foot was arrowed into his upper chest, forcing him to give off a short wheeze as he instinctively let go of Kagome to hold onto his own chest, lurching his body up.

"Naruko-chan!" Kagome acclaimed, not noticing the goggled expressions of Kaede and the other villagers.

"Sorry, dog-boy, but I just can't out of good conscious let you take my friend to parts unknown," Naruko said, not sounding remorseful in the least as she stood in between Kagome and Inuyasha, a mild determined glare in her eyes.

Inuyasha patted his chest with introspective-eyes, 'Either she halfassed that kick of hers or she just ain't got that much elbow grease in storage to really dish out damage,' A smirk covered half of his countenance at his observation, 'It ain't much, but at least I got something to hold over her,' He let his arms drop to his sides to emulate a casual air, "So, I take it your little hurricane-spectacular was just for entertainment values, huh baby-cakes?"

"Eep," Kagome yelped, nervously scooting over to a patiently watching Kaede, 'I think that was the wrong thing to say, buddy.'

"S'cuse me?" Naruko asked dangerously, a dark glare in her orbs. She didn't know what annoyed her more. The fact that he just insulted her jutsu or called her a generic floozy. They were both annoyingly juvenile in their own rights.

"Your ears ain't failin' you," Inuyasha said with a relaxed smirk, disregarding Naruko's increasing annoyance, "So you may as well just get back to your little contest over here and leave the pros to their work. Tho, if you're really craving it, you could always join me and that broad with the jewel over there," He winked, causing Kagome to feel slightly flustered at the implications, "Heh. We'll have a blast. By the end of it you'll get your world _rocked _to thunder," He emphasized by smacking his fist into his palm, before giving Naruko a particularly playful smirk, "Oh, and before you say, there's plenty of me to go around, babe."

"You're really asking for it, aren't you, Dog-boy?" Naruko murmured, not bothering to mask her malicious intentions.

"You mean asking for some sugar," Inuyasha corrected, widening his mischievous smirk at the sight of Naruko openly gnashing her teeth, "Course. Hey, you can gimme all the sugar you can give babe."

Naruko dragged out a long groan in a disgruntled manner, lifting up her right dominant arm before rolling up her sleeve, her eyes dilated and flames of fury replacing the pupils of her eyes, "Oh-kay, just for that one, you're so gonna get wrecked, buddy."

Inuyasha's instinct response was to set himself in a sideways stance, repeatedly bouncing up and down on his heels, keeping his dominant left fist upward, and his weaker right one lowered at his side. To Kagome, he kind of resembled a boxer, "Heh. The day that happens, is the day I become a priestess," Kagome's choice for potential world fighter retorted snidely.

In an impressive show of flexibility that had the villagers gaping like fishes, Naruko flung herself off of her feet, flowing seamlessly to the side. Her legs fanned in mid-flight before for what appeared to be a brief moment before landing in a crouch, her arms held out like she was holding a bow, but her palms held inward in the shape of shells.

"Ha! Then you'd better start practicing!" Naruko assured belligerently, but Inuyasha only urged her to come at him with the flipping motion of his palm, "Because Naruko Uzumaki's about to show you she ain't just some fine piece of ass."

"Child, art thee positive thee will able to handle both Inuyasha and Mistress Centipede?" Kaede asked, eliciting a gasp from Kagome as she hasty spun back around to regard the guarded Mistress Centipede, falling in a complete stupor the moment her brain tried to comprehend how three girls of the same human being could be in two different places at the same time.

"Wait. There are three Naruko-chans?" Kagome murmured, slowly shaking her head from side to side, "Okay. Things are just getting too freaky now to even try and delude myself that I'm till in Tokyo."

There was that name again. Tokyo? The very mention of Kagome's homeland was enough to put several looks of confusion on the faces of all those present. Only Naruko and Kaede nodded in slight understanding, having already heard the identified country from Kagome's lips, though that didn't mean they understood it barring the basic fact it was where Kagome had come from.

"Trust me, Granny. I can take care of one little pup and a pesky bug no problemo," Naruko assured, darting toward Inuyasha.

"Pup, huh?" Inuyasha repeated with a snide smirk. While he casually eyed Naruko gallop toward him, leaving a trail of dust in her wake, his mind had already thought up a counter to halt Naruko's charge. Thus the instant Naruko was in range, she spring boarded herself off of her feet as if she had jumped on a obese person, cocking her fist back in sync with Inuyasha's raising left arm. Hence her punch had its trajectory forcefully changed by Inuyasha's arm, flying miles past his head.

"You know, if I'm a pup, then you're my kitten, right?" Inuyasha said smoothly, a sneer on his visage as he mockingly pinched his cheeks, "You got the proof all over your face." He slid seamlessly under an impressive high roundhouse kick of Naruko's leg, already on course to retaliate before the airborne ponytailed girl even had the chance to touch the ground, "Gotcha," The ponytailed girl's eyes dilated in urgency at the incoming heavy left-hook threw at her by the rude-boy, yet she only had the time to cover her body by crossing her arms over each other to resemble the letter 'X' to nullify some of the damage. Even then it still felt like an elephant had ploughed into her when Inuyasha's clawed fist met her forearms, sending her flying past a shell-shocked Kagome.

"Naruko-chan!" Kagome cried out for her new friend in concern, only breathing in relief once gravity brought Naruko back down to earth. It was amazing how in control Naruko appeared to be to Kagome's perspective even when launched several meters away with the force of a canon.

"Oh, no! The demon's too much for her!"

"We're going to die!"

"Lady Kaede, me thinks she had better chance with centipede."

Kaede hummed slightly, very reluctant to show any signs of agreement with her fellow worrying villagers, "Will it come to this?" She whispered, sliding her hand within the confines of her kimono. Her hand would halt its advancement once her finger-tips would brush iron spherical objects resting in her kimono, "I fear, it may," She said aloud, turning her head to observe her sister's reincarnation.

"Not bad, gal," Inuyasha said in a patronizing manner, letting out a brief chuckle, "Guess cats always land on their feet."

Naruko straightened herself, pouting deeply, "You couldn't be more off track even if you tried, you ass-clown," If anything, she was a fox, not a damn cat.

Inuyasha chuckled, smoothly cupping his chin, "Aw, come now, babe. Don't be like that," He suggested, but Naruko's stance held strong, "You know, for a half-pint and all, you're actually not too bad to look at."

A sudden shiver coursed through Kagome's spine. Being the social girl that she was, she knew better than anyone you _don't _call a short-person _short _without taking shelter, "Uh, Naruko-chan?" The schoolgirl tried hesitantly, regarding the blankly watching Naruko with a timid expression, "A-Are you oka-?"

"Uh. Can you repeat that?" Naruko asked with a clear fake polite smile covering her visage, "You know, so I can be sure that my ears just heard right?"

Inuyasha smirked. Either he was too ignorantly stupid to the dangerous signals or he disregarded them entirely, "Which one? The part about your half-pint height or your fine-ass body?" He snickered, slapping his knee wildly, "You know the former could be a problem. What with my clear height difference, half-pint, I think I might just end up being too much for yo-."

"I'm not short!" Naruko roared insistently, making everyone barring Kaede clamp their hands over their ears to tune out the noise. Inuyasha didn't even see what happened next. All he knew was that he was pulled forward by a strong magnetic force, only for one of his vital points to be set-up to take a full-on horse-ride into a solid boulder, not only giving him a thumping headache but also disconcerting his vision.

"Ow, prick!" Inuyasha howled, grasping his nose as Naruko dropped onto her feet.

"Uh. Did Naruko-chan just head-butt Inuyasha?" Kagome said, stating the obvious.

"So it appears," Kaede answered as the enraged Naruko took two massive handfuls of Inuyasha's blood-red kimono, making sure to spitefully dig her short nails into his chest in her endeavour to hurl Inuyasha. With an almighty heave, Naruko sent Inuyasha tumbling clumsily in the direction of Kagome before bringing him down to his knee by side-heeling the back of his shin. She followed this up by taking a chunk of Inuyasha's long silver hair in her clasp, quickly leaning back before beginning a steady continuous rotation on her heels that speedily gained momentum to the point where Inuyasha was being spun round like a ragdoll.

"Ow! Watch the hair, watch the hair!" Inuyasha yowled, having lost all sense of direction as he was whipped around in dizzying-circles by the furious twin-ponytailed girl.

"Take that back!" Naruko commanded, drawing gawks from her audience at the ease of which she swung Inuyasha around. From their point-of-view, Naruko was essentially dangling a red bag via its silver sting. It was otherworldly.

"Heads up, ladies!" Naruko called out to her clones, getting nods of understanding from them as they saw what was happening.

"I wonder what Naruko-chan's planning to do," Kagome murmured, seeing her friend's clones forcibly throw the downed Mistress Centipede up into the air, perfect for target practise.

"Aim, steady, andddd," The original ponytailed girl drawled out before letting the thoroughly dizzied Inuyasha fly like a spinning blade toward the unbalanced Mistress Centipede, "Fire!"

Inuyasha's body thwacked unforgivingly into Mistress Centipede's upper human body, causing an avalanche of a fall as the two treasure-seeking demons plummeted to the ground with such exertion, those watching could feel the ground underneath their feet shake a bit.

"Amazing! She's in complete control against these two demons!"

"This is unbelievable!"

"God has granted us a saviour!"

"Mommy, you think it be okay to ask the strong-lady to end the wars?"

"Yes, sweetie. Yes, but only after she's finished ridding our village of the demons."

"Wow," Kagome whispered, in complete awe as she turned to regard Naruko with a look of sheepish admiration, "Remind me never to get on your bad side. K?"

Naruko gave Kagome a thumbs-up, "Can do, but right now I'm ending one of these ass-clowns," She said seriously, immediately caging her hands together, moving them to her side. As she allowed them, her audience watched her left hand float around in a bizarre pattern in front of her right one, almost as if Naruko was attempting to scratch her right hand. Then, her left hand froze, opening out all four fingers. The crowd's eyes expanded in dazed shock surveying an ethereal four-sided wind, similar to a windmill, but blue in colour take shape inside of Naruko's once again caged hands.

The azure 'wind' trapped within Naruko's caged hands then moulded, forming the shiniest blue spherical object most would ever see in their lives. Its core was even emitting a bright white luminescence of its own, highlighting their open-mouthed, gaping expressions even in the vast darkness of the village.

"Wow," Kagome said inaudibly, voicing everyone's thoughts.

"Rasengan (Spiralling Sphere)," Naruko whispered neutrally, taking off in a run to at least end one of the demons plaguing the village, leaving behind a speechless crowd. The silence that had befallen them was so predominant even the slight gust of wind that inexplicably blew by after Naruko's departure seemed absolutely deafening to their ears.

"Uh." Eventually Kagome tried to take shot at breaking the silence, "I guess we can all agree that Naruko-chan's _really _strong."

Everyone who had witnessed Naruko's basic strength first hand slowly nodded their heads, unaware the real demonstration was just coming up.

XxX

"Aw, shit!" Inuyasha groaned, his nose practically blocking up with the scent of his own blood. He could feel it caked all over his lower-face. Additionally, his head felt like it was burning from having his silver hair yanked so brutally, and his vision still wouldn't stop spinning, doing nothing but increasing his throbbing headache, "Damn, what crazy strength. Gal's like a damn ape," He said, subjecting his head to a much needed massage whist trying to sit up using his free hand as support, abruptly having to endure a surge of pain in the process.

"Ow! My back!" He said, biting back a gasp.

The silver-haired dog-based demon was forced to sit his pain in the back seat when his nose picked up on the fast approaching scent of the one who had left him in this condition in the first place, "The fuck?" He murmured, looking skyward to catch a sprinkle. He placed his hand to his brow, peering his eyes for a brief moment until Naruko's form came into view at a remarkable speed, along with a shiny orb-shaped doohickey that set off all of his instinctual alarms.

"Something tells me I'm _not _gonna wanna be on the receiving end of _that _thingamajig-. Holy, cow!" Inuyasha yelped, more or less flinging himself to the side as if he was a pebble, just barely avoiding the assault of Naruko's move. A brief, but tremendous tremor surged through the ground, resulting in a mini earthquake that made Inuyasha bounce off of the ground whenever he touched it.

When he finally stopped bouncing all over the place - taking the chance to sit up when he could trust himself to get his bearings in order - he murmured in petrified awe, "Whoa. If I had been on the end of that bad girl I woulda been a dog-shaped smudge on the ground," The dust obscuring the culprit from view didn't even bother the normally impatient rude-boy. He just sat with his leg curled up to his chest, silently marvelling at the mini crater Naruko dispassionately stood in, the remains of Mistress Centipede scattered all around her.

"How's that? You till want to underestimate me tough guy?" Naruko asked with a sideways glare.

"Naw," Inuyasha whispered bluntly, pulling himself up in a leg-crossed position, feeling humorously embarrassed that he had basically admitted defeat so easily, "Hahaha." It was either that or the two clones of Naruko that he had spotted.

"What's so funny?" Naruko asked blankly, her clones mimicking her expression.

"Whoa! You're insane!" Inuyasha complimented with a broad grin.

"Uh. Thank you," Naruko said awkwardly, not quite sure where his sudden burst of excitement came from.

Inuyasha let his back hit the ground to bring his knees up to his chest, flipping them outward so fast it basically carried his body up, "Heh. Who woulda thought a squirt would be carrying a bomb in her arsenal."

He instantly realized that wasn't the right thing to say, "Hey, shut up! Unless you want a Rasengan in your smug face!" Naruko threatened, rolling up her sleeve as her clones mimicked her actions and angry expression.

Inuyasha raised his hands in a placating manner, a playful grin on his visage, "I'm playin', I'm playin'... Damn," He hurried, but didn't stop his approach to Naruko. When it was clear Naruko wasn't going to tear into him, he let his hands fall to his sides, "Damn, gal. You need to take a chill pill."

Naruko placed her hands on her hips, "Maybe I will when a certain someone stops making wise-guy remarks about my height!"

Inuyasha chuckled, "A little sensitive about our height, are we?" He teased, getting a glare from Naruko, which only made him chuckle even harder.

"Can it!" Naruko commanded, cautiously watching Inuyasha casually drop into the small crater, before moving over to her, "And you better not be trying any monkey business, mister."

"No monkey business," Inuyasha said, coming just short of invading Naruko's personal space. In a tense battle of wills, Inuyasha's eyes looked down into the orbs of the petite blond haired girl's, as she stared fiercely up at his.

They both silently agreed their battle would be postponed for the sake of the villagers.

"So," Inuyasha said, drawing out the word with an offhanded ring, "Rasengan, huh?"

"Yeah," Naruko replied, guarded, her arms falling to her sides, "What about it?"

"Just wondering, is that the nifty attack that made this beauty we're in?" Inuyasha asked.

"Yep," Naruko answered honestly, eyeing the taller boy with a suspicious gaze, "What are you getting at?"

"Damn. You don't beat around the bush," Inuyasha noted sheepishly, rubbing the side of his neck, "In that case either will I," With a needless cough into his fist, Inuyasha asked bluntly, "Just wondering if you'd be interested in a dea-."

"I'm not teaching you the Rasengan," Naruko deadpanned, causing Inuyasha to nearly fall down at how easy his intentions were deciphered, "Well, to be more precise, I _can't _teach you the Rasengan even if I wanted to. Sorry, but you're on your own."

"Aw, c'mon babe."

"I'm not your babe."

You should know I give some damn good massages," He casually moved behind her, placing his hands on her upper arms before sliding them downward, discreetly wriggling them underneath her armpits when he felt he was in line.

"I don't want your massages! Oh, and the last time I checked, massages start from the shoulders, not the sides."

"Not the way I do 'em they don't." Mischievously ignoring Naruko's gasp, Inuyasha let his hands mould heavenly delight in the form of two cushy melons, with a goofy smile forming on his countenance, "Whoa, hot damn! They're so squishy."

"You pervert! I bet you were just pretending to be interested in learning the Rasengan so you could get a chance to grope me huh?" Naruko excused, trying to throw Inuyasha off of her, but his much larger weight made it extremely difficult for her to accomplish her endeavour, "Ugh! Get off of me you bastard!"

"Uh. Just gimme a sec."

"No!"

"Aw, but I need my fix. You wouldn't turn away a poor pup, would you?"

"Oh yes I would!"

"..."

¬..¬

"I know you like it really."

"Ugh."

"See! You're turning red!"

"Yeah! From anger, not from embarrassment you lummox!"

"Tomato, tomoto."

"Ohhh. How do I get myself into these things?"

* * *

><p><strong><span>Stats<span>**

**Naruko**

**Speed: 4:5**

**Strength: 2:5**

**Intelligence: 3**

**Taijutsu: 4**

**Ninjutsu 3**

**Total: 17**

* * *

><p><strong>Inuyasha <strong>

**Speed: 2:5**

**Strength: 4:5**

**Intelligence: 2**

**Fighting competence: 3**

**Skillset: 1:5**

**Total: 11:5**

* * *

><p><strong>Kagome<strong>

**Speed: 1**

**Strength: 0**

**Intelligence 2:5**

**Fighting competence: 0**

**Skillset: 0**

**Total 3:0**

* * *

><p><strong>And that ends that. We discover this version of 'Naruto' is not only stronger, faster, and smarter than her canon counterpart but has also experienced her events differently than he had his, actually managing to do something he didn't and that was learn new jutsu and to fight properly.<strong>


End file.
